Subjective work-family conflicts: the challenge of studying self-employed workers

This chapter discusses how the Job Demands and Resources (JD-R) framework can be applied to the study of working conditions that characterise different self-employment positions for the analysis of subjective work-family conflict. Firstly, it focuses on the JD-R framework discussing how work-related and family-related demands and resources characterise all job positions and, in particular, traditional and emerging types of self-employment affecting their perception of work-to-family and family-to-work conflicts. Secondly, it develops an empirical exercise based on the European Survey on Working Conditions (2015), showing how subjective work-to-family and family-to-work conflicts vary between different types of self-employment (genuine and dependent) and how the different distribution of work-related and family-related demands and resources across different work arrangements mediates subjective work-family conflicts. Finally, it considers advantages and disadvantages of the JD-R approach for studying self-employed subjective work-family conflicts and possible developments and new directions for future research.