Flexible Work Conditions Can Blur the Work-Home Border — Especially for Men
Using a nationally representative U.S. sample of 2,671 workers, this study finds that schedule control and job autonomy — typically seen as resources — are positively associated with work-home role blurring, but mainly for men. Both forms of role blurring raise work-to-home conflict, and those effects are amplified or buffered depending on workers' level of job control.
What we studied
The conventional wisdom about flexible work arrangements is reassuring: if you control your own schedule and have autonomy over how your work gets done, you should be better at keeping work and home life from bleeding into each other. Schieman and Glavin set out to test that assumption — and found it was mostly wrong. Drawing on border theory and the job demands-resources model, they argued that schedule control and job autonomy could just as plausibly function as demands that pull workers across the work-home border, rather than resources that protect it.
The study used the 2002 National Study of the Changing Workforce (NSCW), a nationally representative telephone survey of the U.S. labor force, retaining 2,671 employed adults after excluding cases with missing values. The NSCW achieved a response rate of 52 to 61 percent of eligible respondents with a 98 percent completion rate. Two distinct forms of work-home role blurring were the focal outcomes: the frequency of receiving work-related contact outside of normal work hours (eight-point scale, never to many times a day), and the frequency of bringing work home (five-point scale, never to more than once a week). Work-to-home conflict was measured as a five-item index asking how often work cut into family time, energy, mood, home performance, and concentration.
Two competing predictions organized the analysis. The resources hypothesis predicted that schedule control and job autonomy would reduce exposure to role blurring and buffer workers from its harmful effects. The demands hypothesis predicted the opposite: that these same conditions would increase role blurring — because higher-status, higher-autonomy workers face stronger norms of organizational devotion and 24/7 availability — and would amplify the link between role blurring and conflict. The study also tested whether these patterns looked different for women and men, pitting a traditional view (men experience more blurring because work intrusions are more culturally normative for them) against an egalitarian view (the experiences of women and men are converging).
What we found
The demands hypothesis received the stronger support, though with important nuances by gender and by which form of role blurring was examined. In the full sample, both schedule control and job autonomy clearly went with receiving more work-related contact outside of normal hours. Job autonomy also clearly went with bringing work home more often. The resources hypothesis — predicting that flexibility would reduce blurring — was not supported.
Gender shaped these patterns sharply. The link between schedule control and receiving work contact was clearly stronger for men than for women. Similarly, job autonomy went with more work contact among men only. For bringing work home, schedule control went with that outcome among men only, while job autonomy predicted bringing work home equally for women and men. Men also reported more after-hours work contact than women, while there was no overall gender difference for bringing work home or work-to-home conflict.
Both forms of role blurring independently raised work-to-home conflict. Receiving work contact and bringing work home each clearly went with more conflict even after accounting for schedule control, job autonomy, and an extensive set of other factors. Crucially, the effect of receiving work contact on conflict depended on job autonomy: the link was clear only among workers with low job autonomy, while those with high autonomy showed no detectable link between contact and conflict — consistent with the resources hypothesis for this specific pairing. The reverse held for bringing work home: that behavior went more strongly with conflict among workers with greater schedule control — consistent with the demands hypothesis.
The findings on gender and conflict were notably egalitarian: the links between both forms of role blurring and work-to-home conflict were essentially the same for women and men. The traditional prediction — that blurring would matter more for women's conflict because of their greater family obligations — was not supported. Once workers blur the border, regardless of gender, the conflict costs appear to be comparable.
What this means
The findings complicate the popular narrative that flexibility at work is straightforwardly good for work-life balance. Schedule control and job autonomy do help workers manage conflict — but they also come bundled with norms of devotion and availability that push workers, particularly men, to blur the work-home border more often. The costs of that blurring are real and largely equal for women and men once it occurs. Organizations and policymakers who promote flexibility as a work-family solution need to pair it with explicit norms about after-hours availability — otherwise, the freedom to control one's schedule may simply become the freedom to work everywhere, all the time.
Flexibility without norms creates availability expectations, not balance
This research shows that granting schedule control and job autonomy is associated with more after-hours contact and more frequent bringing-work-home — especially for men — not less. Offering flexible arrangements without also setting clear expectations about when workers are not expected to be available may simply shift where and when work happens, not reduce its encroachment on home life. Managers should pair flexibility policies with explicit right-to-disconnect norms and lead by example in not contacting employees outside core hours.
Flexible work policy must address the 24/7 availability trap
Policy frameworks that equate schedule flexibility with work-family balance overlook a structural paradox: the same conditions that give workers freedom over their time also make them more accessible and more likely to blur the work-home boundary. Legislation or regulatory frameworks that address after-hours contact expectations — not just hours worked — would more directly target the mechanism through which flexibility generates harm. Right-to-disconnect laws currently adopted in several countries offer one model worth evaluating in the North American context.
Having schedule control doesn't mean you have to use it for work
If you have control over your work schedule or high job autonomy, research suggests you are at greater risk of blurring the line between work and home — and that blurring reliably raises conflict with family life. Recognizing that the organizational culture around high-status, high-autonomy jobs often rewards constant availability is a first step. Setting deliberate limits on when you respond to work contact — and treating those limits as a professional norm rather than a personal preference — can help preserve the benefits of flexibility without the costs.