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Work–Family Conflict and Retirement Preferences

¹ Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin–Madison.
² Department of Sociology and California Center for Population Research, University of California, Los Angeles.

Address correspondence to James M. Raymo, Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin, 1180 Observatory Drive, Madison, WI 53706. E-Mail: jraymo{at}ssc.wisc.edu

Objectives. This study investigates relationships between retirement preferences and perceived levels of work–family conflict.

Methods. Using the large sample of 52–54-year-old respondents to the 1992 Wisconsin Longitudinal Study, we estimated multinomial logistic regression models of preferences for partial and full retirement within the next 10 years. We examined the association between retirement preferences and perceived work–family conflict, evaluated the extent to which work–family conflict was a mediating mechanism between stressful work and family circumstances and preferences to retire, and explored potential gender differences in the association between work–family conflict and preferring retirement.

Results. Work–family conflict was positively related to preferences for both full and partial retirement. Yet work–family conflict did not appear to mediate relationships between stressful work and family environments and retirement preferences, nor did significant gender differences emerge in this association.

Discussion. Our analyses provide the first direct evidence of the role played by work–family conflict in the early stages of the retirement process, although we were not able to identify the sources of conflict underlying this relationship. Identifying the sources of this conflict and the psychological mechanisms linking work–family conflict to retirement preferences is an important task for future researchers.