Two years into their marriage Emma and Andrew Crauford realized they were both working too hard. What was left at the end of each week was two very tired, grumpy people who had nothing left to give each other.

New research to be launched later this month backs the Crauford’s observations - one of the most profound problems facing Australian marriages is the conflict between home and work.

“We look back now and are thankful that we saw it happening,” says Emma. “We realized that if things didn’t change, we would wake up in 15 years and find out that we no longer knew, or for that matter, loved each other.

Emma made the tough decision to look for a job closer to home with more reasonable hours, while Andrew decided to put a hold on his after-hours professional studies.

“I took a pay cut of $20,000 and started a job 5 minutes from home that was 2 hours less work a day,” says Emma. “Previously, when work was taking everything during the week, I even resented going to church as it took precious ‘weekend time’. We found getting to mid week Bible Study difficult due to long work hours. I wanted to be involved more at church but didn’t know when I would fit it in. But the greatest deciding factor was that we were only newly married and yet already feeling like strangers.”

Andrew agrees that the biggest motivating factor was lack of time for family.

“I’d spend an average 12 hours per day away from home at work, to then come home and feel committed to ‘hit the books’. Whilst motivated to study, I was distracted by tiredness and my inability to spend time with Emma, relating with her, not having the ability to absorb things that were happening in Emma and [our son] Harry’s lives. This was not a position I felt comfortable with, nor one I felt would carry us into the years ahead,” he says.

The 2002-2003 Wellbeing and Security Survey (WSS) is a comprehensive 350 question survey database of over 1500 people compiled by Edith Cowan University, Anglicare and NCLS Research. Now three Sydney Anglican researchers have delved deep into the data to examine how home/work conflict is linked to marital problems. They have written two new research papers, to be launched later this month at the Centre for Apologetic Scholarship and Education (CASE) conference God and The Family at New College, University of NSW.

The two papers, "Christian Spirituality and Relational Wellbeing' and "Home/Work Conflict and Relational Wellbeing', will show that strong Christian belief, a monogamous partnering history and low levels of work/home conflict are the key factors linked to healthier marriages.

Indeed, the new research shows that over 45 per cent of workers surveyed ‘always’ or ‘often’ experience conflict between their work and home life.

Tracy Gordon, co-author of the papers and researcher for Sydney Diocese’s Social Issues Executive, said the research team had been most disturbed to find that committed Christians are indistinguishable from the rest of the population in the extent they experience conflict between work and home life.

“This came as a surprise because previous American research was pointing in the other direction,” she said. “In the USA, Bible-believing Protestants have retained traditional gender roles that protect them from home/work conflict.”

Jeremy Halcrow, Anglican Media’s consultant on the project, says he believes the detailed evidence in the research papers will be a wake call to Christians regarding the extent to which a workaholic attitude linked to materialism has infected Australian church culture.

“We looked at four measures of relational wellbeing - security, intimacy, harmony, and agreement about gender roles. The research shows that home/work conflict is the sociological factor most thoroughly linked to poorer outcomes for married couples.”

Mr Halcrow said the research papers also uncover hard evidence of a self-destructive work-first culture in Australian life, which he suspects for many Australians is being driven by the idolatry of consumerism.

“Our materialistic mindset makes us believe that if only we could work harder and earn more, we can buy our way out of our relationship struggles and into nirvana,” he said. “The facts clearly present the tragic delusion of that fantasy. But if we earned less and worked less, our lives would be relationally richer.”

The Crauford’s say that in-line with the research findings downshifting has ‘absolutely’ made their marriage healthier.

“We noticed the changes straight away. We were coping better, spending more quality and quantity time together and home was running more smoothly. We felt more connected to each other, enjoyed spending time at home together and even grew spiritually as we had more time and energy to give back to God through ministry and other relationships. We have learnt that nothing good can happen without some form of sacrifice,” says Emma.

However, fast forward 3 years and the Crauford’s are keen not to be portrayed as the ‘perfect’ Christian couple.

“We are still learning about work, family, home balance and it is an ongoing issue that now seems even more important with a child in the picture,” Andrew says. “We are still very much a work in progress and can have tendencies to fall back into old habits, but we have learnt to hold each other more accountable and when we are faced with choices and decisions, we try to make them based on what is best for our marriage and family.”

Andrew also adds that he has established an accountability partnership with a Christian mate.

“We are both in jobs that demand similar time and stress.  We make an effort to meet weekly to study practical and biblically based guidance for Christian men, especially in relation to being good husbands and fathers. Through praying and sharing together, we encourage each other to keep working at our marriages and help keep our jobs and careers in perspective,” he says.

The report’s third author, the Rev Dr Andrew Cameron, is very sympathetic to the Crauford’s concern for a more supportive church culture. “Pastors and theologians have to rediscover how the Bible assists people to unravel this terrible structural problem.”

Dr Andrew Cameron, who is ethics lecturer at Moore Theological College and chair of the Social Issues Executive, added he hopes the research lends weight to Archbishop Peter Jensen’s concerns about the impact on families of the Federal Government’s workplace reforms.

Of particular concern is the Government’s plan to remove the ‘no disadvantage rule’ in workplace negotiations, particularly when workers are asked to trade away weekends, annual leave and public holidays for pay.

It is suspected this will undermine the penalty rate system, thereby removing the economic hand break that currently prevents weekends and public holidays from being absorbed into the working week.

Dr Cameron says that in the new workplace culture we will need to ‘ask God for moral courage to resist more extreme workplace demands’.

“We shouldn’t be naive about the cost to our relationships that result from our attitudes to work and rest,” he said. “God may also be calling Government leaders to another kind of moral courage; resistance to the delusion that economic growth is the sole route to our society’s wellbeing.”

The research is a joint project of the Social Issues Executive, Diocese of Sydney, and Anglican Media Sydney, publishers of sydneyanglicans.net.
Printed copies of the full research papers will be available late November.
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