Content area
Abstract
A large body of research exists concerning working parents’ dual-role conflict, known as Work-Family Conflict (WFC; Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985) and its adverse effect on work and non-work variables. Given the similarity to the salient life roles of academic work and parenting, this study applied the model of WFC to a college student-parent population to test a model of the harmful effects of College-Family Conflict (CFC) on academic variables. This sample included 345 graduate and undergraduate student-parents. This study used Structural Equation Modeling to provide a model of dual-role conflict that demonstrates how the roles of parent and college student conflict and adversely affect students’ study quality and quantity, class attendance and lateness, academic self-efficacy, and indirectly impact their GPA. CFC leads to perceptions of disrupted study quantity and quality, as well as influences students’ classroom attendance and beliefs about their ability to succeed academically. These findings should be understood to reflect only part of the effect of CFC and provide evidence for the further application of the WFC model to college student-parents. The findings highlight the importance of the additional support college student-parents need and the future research that could be done to find ways to lessen this conflict.
