The delicate balance: Demand, support, role strain and stress in multiple role women

Many women practitioners, social work students and service users experience role strain, and stress due to difficulty balancing multiple roles. Support can help but little is known about how demand and support affect role strain and stress. This paper develops and tests a model linking these four variables in 481 women, who carry job and family roles, while studying social work, nursing or adult education. Multiple regression analysis showed no evidence that support interacts with demands to moderate their effect. Causal path analysis revealed that job, family and student demands act independently of support. All three demand types affect role strain, which in, turn influences stress. Support from family/friends affects stress directly as do student and family demands. Practitioners and educators need to be sensitive to the impact of multiple role women's demanding situation, while seeking to increase their access to support, especially from family and friends.