Work-life Balance Among Health Administration Faculty Who Are Parents

Balancing the multiple demands of work and personal life can be challenging. In this study, we examine the relationship between being a parent and managing work-life balance for faculty in the field of health administration. Poor work-life balance can lead to stress, turnover, low engagement, and burnout. Given the projected shortages of faculty in health administration, these issues warrant investigation. Using a recent survey, we examine faculty who have children under age 20 and who are presumably juggling competing demands. We inquire how often they are missing events at home due to work and how often they are missing events at work due to factors at home. We control for gender, dual careers, number of children, tenure status, job focus, race, marital status, and type of university. We also examine the change over time for faculty who are struggling to balance work and personal demands. The most significant predictor of conflict in work-life balance is gender, with women being more likely to miss something at home. This finding supports the notions of gender identity and varying gender preferences in parenthood. Achieving a diverse workforce is important for training future healthcare leaders. Accommodations such as flexible work hours and part-time positions, as well as mentoring and encouragement for parent faculty members, may alleviate the stress due to less than ideal work-life balance.