The Relationship Between Work-Family Conflict and Health Behaviors: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

As family structures and workforce compositions evolve, individuals increasingly navigate multiple roles across work and family domains. Despite growing research interest, a comprehensive synthesis examining the relationship between work-family conflict and health behaviors remains absent. This systematic review and meta-analysis addresses this significant gap by quantifying associations between work-family conflict and five important health behaviors: sleep disturbances, smoking behaviors, alcohol consumption, physical activity levels, and healthy diet. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines were followed. Electronic databases (PubMed, Embase, PsycINFO, Web of Science) were searched. Heterogeneity and publication bias were assessed using forest plots, I², Cochran's Q-statistics, Funnel plots, and the Egger test, respectively. A total of 33 articles were included in this systematic review and meta-analysis. Work-family conflict had a small-to-medium positive association with sleep disturbances (r = 0.188; 95% CI [0.128, 0.247]); a negative association with healthy diet (r = -0.129; 95% CI [-0.219, -0.037]); and a modest and positive association with smoking behaviors (r = 0.082; 95% CI [0.033, 0.206]) and alcohol consumption (r = 0.074; 95% CI [0.039, 0.109]). The findings of this study suggest that individual, family, and organizational strategies reducing work-family conflict may facilitate the development and adoption of healthier behaviors, such as improving sleep and dietary practices. This study enhances understanding of work-family conflict's relationship with health behaviors, bridging the management and occupational health psychology literature with the general and public health literature by systematically examining, for the first time, how work-family conflicts impair personal health behaviors.