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The main purpose of this study is to link work‐family conflict, quality of work and non‐work lives, quality of life and social support (supervisor and spouse supports). Specifically, it seeks to address three different roles of social support that have theoretical and empirical support and the mediating roles of quality of work life and quality of non‐work life.

The SEM‐based approach has been used to study supervisor and spouse supports as moderators between work‐family conflict and quality of life; independent variables of work‐family conflict; independent variables of quality of life. The study has been carried out in Malaysia.

The main findings are: work‐family conflict has relationship with quality of life; quality of work life and non‐work life are “partial” mediators between work‐family conflict and quality of life; and, among the various roles of social support, its role as an independent variable of quality of life gives the best results.

The research is based on a cross‐sectional study conducted in Malaysia and addresses only the spouse and supervisor supports as components of social support.

The research has developed a comprehensive model linking work‐family conflict, quality of work and non‐work lives, and quality of life and has studied the role of social support.

Through analysis of interviews conducted in 1996‐98 with reduced‐load professionals and managers in organizations, this study examines in‐depth the meaning of a good family life from the perspective of those seeking to enhance their personal and family experience by cutting back on hours devoted to work. The results suggest that the concept of family well‐being is more complex and multi‐faceted than prior research has indicated. Six different dimensions of family well‐being are identified through examination of recurrent themes in the interviews: (1) spending high quality time with family members; (2) being able to relax in free time; (3) emotional well‐being and health of family members; (4) high quality communication and support; (5) high quality child care and education; (6) satisfaction with work and work load at home. Finally, three paradigms of family well‐being derived from interview data are proposed: Family well‐being as effective parenting, family well‐being as love and being together, family well‐being as peace and harmony.

Purpose: This chapter focuses on the relations between aging and the perception about the families’ quality of life in a medium-sized Portuguese city. Departing from the descriptions of individuals living with at least one child under 14 years of age, particular emphasis is put on how young adults perceive and incorporate into their speeches the presence and role of non-cohabiting elderly, namely their parents and in-laws, as an expression of the quality of life they experience.

Design/methodology/approach: Data rely on episodic interviews conducted with both men and women with young children (3–14 years old), within a broader sociological research devoted to the study of family rituals. The data collected was analyzed using qualitative techniques of content analysis with the help of NVivo software (QSR). The data is presented recurring to contextualized narratives.

Findings: Data analysis allows to conclude that geography matters in the perception that young adults have when reflecting upon the role of the elderly surrounding them, either their parents or in-laws. The presence and coexistence of generations are perceived as “priceless,” a “fortune,” and a “privilege,” possible in a medium-sized city, where everything is close enough to thicken the informal intergenerational solidarities between grandparents, parents, and grandchildren. Behind the scenes, data, furthermore, discloses unpredictable tensions arising mainly regarding children’s education, rules, and behavior.

Originality/value: This chapter contributes to shed light into the daily life of elderly people who are still independent and active, and the seemingly invisible presence and unimportant role they play in their children and grandchildren’s lives.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the association between mother‐child and father‐child communication and children's life satisfaction, and the moderating effect of communication with stepparents.

Data from the 2006 Health Behaviour in School‐aged Children: WHO‐collaborative Study in Scotland (n=4,959) were analysed using multilevel linear regression analyses.

There was an association between both mother‐child and father‐child communication and young people's life satisfaction. Relationship with mother was particularly important, especially among girls. Among boys, not living in a traditional two‐parent family was a predictor of low life satisfaction, even when communication with one or more parents was easy. This effect was independent of economic disadvantage. The quality of the relationship with stepparents moderated these associations very slightly and in single father families only.

Strategies at the population level are recommended to enhance an open atmosphere in the home where young people feel they are able to talk to their parents about things that are bothering them. Further work is needed to understand the needs of high risk groups such as boys living in single father households and girls living in single mother and step families.

The mental well‐being of children and adolescents is a priority area for the World Health Organization and the Scottish Government but is a relatively new field with little known and no measures as yet identified. This study considered the impact of determinants related to the family on adolescent life satisfaction. The context of lone father families, an often missed category, was considered, as was the moderating effect of step‐parents.

This chapter focuses on military couples and factors that affect their experiences of work, stress, and health using a life course perspective. An introduction to the definition of military couples is provided followed by a brief review of previous research on marital quality and divorce among military couples. The core of the chapter describes the advantages of using a life course perspective to examine the military life course for couples, and two critical transitions of military life are more fully examined. Specifically, periodic relocation and deployment and their impacts on military couples are reviewed in detail. Future directions for research on military couples are provided, and the use of the Convoy Model of Social Relations as an integrative approach to examine military personnel and family members’ stress and health across the military life course is introduced.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between labour market integration and family satisfaction in a cross-country comparison perspective and takes important intervening factors into consideration such as the social policy and flexibility strategy as well as the cultural context of 27 European countries.

The authors rely on data from the European Quality of Life Survey 2012 and conduct multi-level analyses using both the one-step random intercept Model with cross-level interactions as well as a two-step hierarchical model. The country-specific framework is addressed with indicators for the level of social security, for external flexibility labour market characteristics, and for the predominant family solidarity norm of a country.

The paper provides empirical support for the thesis of social disruption according to insecure labour market attachment. This link is weakened in countries where flexible labour market conditions are accompanied by strong efforts on state-provided social security. High family support norms can only partially compensate a lack of social protection covered by the state.

The paper reveals the increasing social vulnerability of people who are not or not completely integrated into the labour market. These risks cannot be convincingly weakened by social security measures. To know more about these mechanisms, the link between labour market integration and the quality of family life should be studied in more detail in a cross-country comparative perspective to develop ideas and give advice on reducing the potential insecurity of flexible employment.

The paper complements previous research by providing empirical findings about the link between insecure labour market attachment and the integration into family networks in a cross-country comparison perspective.

The measurement of children's quality of life has an important role to play in improving their experience of health and social services, and in promoting a child‐centred approach to service provision. This article provides a rationale for both the development of robust quality of life measures specifically for children and also the use of these measures in assessing the effectiveness of treatments and policy changes. It highlights recent advances in the development of quality of life measures and provides examples of two instruments that have incorporated these steps to produce reliable and valid measures that are not only comprehensible to children of different age groups, but also meaningful to parents and health professionals. The challenge of matching statistically significant change in quality of life to changes of perceived importance to the individual is also discussed in the light of the advantages to be gained from the increased uptake within health and social care of quality of life measures for children.

States that there is a need for a practical instrument to measure the present situation of work‐life balance. Describes the development process of the Family and Business Audit within the Flemish context. Details the setting up and aims of the system before outlining its application in some detail and other existing instruments also emploiyed. Provides a number of short case studies to demonstrate its effectiveness.

The family time is being an important element in assisting to empower the mutual feeling in connecting both love and compassion among the family members. The copying initiative to spend the quality time with family is supposed to embed the feeling of security, the family values with confidence, in order to strengthen the social intelligence. However, due to the pandemic age with its outstanding challenges on being less socially connected, the more affection as the real impact toward the reduction on social interaction requires the attempts to restore the process with the sufficient link between emotional and social intelligence. The aim of this chapter attempts to examine the family quality time maintenance for children’s social intelligence in order to fully comprehend the strategic way of particular issue identification in affecting the children, by the suggested proper solution amidst the pandemic age. The empirical data from the qualitative interview among 12 public educators were employed by exploring their beliefs and practices in maintaining the family time quality for their children social intelligence support. The finding of this chapter reveals that there are three aspects of maintaining the family time for children’s social intelligence support, consisting of the technical skills to improve the family relationships, the communication on the feelings to care for being close relationships and emotional intimacy to advance the family contact in broadening the comfortable spend of time with emotional integrity and openness. The value of this chapter is to give an insightful value on the knowledge enrichment about the strategic maintenance of family time quality for children’s social intelligence. Offering the understandable suggestion together with an effective method to bring the family time into being closer is supposed to lead to the emotional intelligence among the peer-family members, mainly parent–children relationship amidst the pandemic age.

Purpose – The goal of this chapter was to empirically describe the patterns and dimensions of community interaction of typically underserved families of children with autism and other developmental disabilities within a family quality of life (FQoL) context.

Methodology – We utilized the theoretical framework of FQoL to examine the community interactions of 149 families who voluntarily participated in this study. The Family Quality of Life Survey (FQoLS-2006) was used to collect data from the primary caregivers of the children with the disability, 92% of which were mothers. We conducted an in-depth examination of the six dimensions (importance, opportunities, initiative, attainment, stability, and satisfaction) of community interaction.

Findings – Most families viewed community interaction as very important to their FQoL and the majority (62%) were satisfied with their community interaction, although just over a third reported high attainment, and only 48% reported having adequate opportunities for community interaction. Families of children with autism reported lower attainment of community interaction when compared to families of children with other developmental disabilities (t=2.63, df=147, p=0.01). Some race-related and child-related differences were also observed in the initiative taken to pursue community interaction and discrimination experienced by families.

Limitations – Results must be interpreted with caution, as the participants in this study were all volunteers and the majority were mothers, and therefore may not be representative of all families of children with disabilities. Despite the limitations, findings from this study are a first step in understanding the multidimensional nature of community interaction of low-income, minority families.