Different Types of Work–Family Balance, Social Support, and Job Satisfaction: A Latent Class Analysis

The purpose of this paper is to test a typology of work–family balance and explore its effect on job satisfaction, as well as to test whether different sources of social support moderate this effect. The paper uses quantitative data on professionals and managers from the 2008 National Study of the Changing Workforce Survey (N = 1120). Latent Class Analysis (LCA) results suggest a three-class model: Beneficial, Moderate Beneficial, and Moderate Active. The Beneficial group has high work-to-family enrichment and family-to-work enrichment, but low work-to-family conflict and family-to-work conflict. The Moderate Beneficial group has moderate work-to-family enrichment and family-to-work enrichment, but low work-to-family conflict and family-to-work conflict. Lastly, the Moderate Active group has moderate levels of work-to-family enrichment, family-to-work enrichment, work-to-family conflict, and family-to-work conflict. The Beneficial group did not differ from the Moderate Beneficial group in terms of job satisfaction, whereas the Moderate Active group showed lower job satisfaction than both the Beneficial and the Moderate Beneficial groups. Finally, the lower job satisfaction among the Moderate Active group is weakened when there is colleague, supervisor, and organizational support. The implications of these findings for the organization of the workplace are further discussed in the paper.