What is it about?
Balancing work and family roles is a significant challenge for dual-earner couples and often undermines relationship satisfaction, yet some couples cope more successfully than others. Core self-evaluations describe how people generally see themselves: whether they feel confident, capable, emotionally stable, and able to deal with life's challenges. Drawing on Conservation of Resources theory, this study explores the role of core self-evaluation in promoting romantic relationship satisfaction for both partners by helping partners cope with competing demands of time or psychological effort invested in family or work roles. The study also asks whether the benefits of core self-evaluation extend beyond the individual by reducing the crossover of work-family conflict between partners.
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Why is it important?
Rather than focusing on workplace demands or family circumstances, this study highlights the role of personal psychological resources in how couples manage competing life roles. We contemprarily examine both directions of role conflicts from work to family roles and from family to work. The study shows that understanding work–family conflict requires looking at both partners as an interconnected system. This perspective can help researchers and practitioners develop interventions that strengthen personal resilience and positive self-views, ultimately benefiting both individual well-being and relationship quality.
Perspectives
Balancing work and family has become an increasingly common challenge for dual-earner couples, often placing strain on their relationships and making cooperation and mutual support more important than ever. As more families navigate competing work and family responsibilities, understanding the psychological resources that promote resilience becomes increasingly relevant. Interestingly, although previous research has reported stronger crossover effects from men to women, our findings revealed no consistent gender differences in the partner effects of personality traits, suggesting that these processes may be more universal across genders. I believe one of the study's main contributions is its emphasis on work–family conflict as a process that is shaped not only by external demands but also by the personal resources that partners bring into the relationship. By integrating resource-based and dyadic perspectives, the study encourages researchers and practitioners to adopt a more holistic view of couples when developing interventions to promote relationship well-being.
Katarina Banov Trošelj
University of Rijeka
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Core self-evaluation, work–family conflict, and relationship satisfaction: evidence from Croatian dual-earner couples, BMC Psychology, January 2026, Springer Science + Business Media,
DOI: 10.1186/s40359-026-04014-6.
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