Relationship of Marital Satisfaction, Family Support and Family-Work Conflict Factors Among Malaysian Fathers with Adolescents

The study on contextual factors in Malaysian family is more concentrated among mothers compared to the fathers. Malaysian fathers are often influenced by these factors embedded in the family. This study examines the level of contextual factors among fathers of adolescent children. The survey was conducted using a simple sampling method, on a group of 413 fathers with adolescent children from all districts in the state of Selangor, West Peninsular of Malaysia. A set of questionnaires was used to derive data from the fathers ̕ contextual factors which are marriage satisfaction, family support and work-family conflict among fathers of adolescents. Analysis on frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation, t-test, analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and the Pearson correlations were used to investigate the level and correlation of contextual factors among fathers of adolescent children. The Pearson correlation shows that there is a significant correlation between work-family conflict and marriage satisfaction and between family support and marriage satisfaction. However, there is no significant correlation between family support and work-family conflict. The study proficiently contributes towards the exploration of influencing factors for the involvement of fathers in parenting.


Introduction
The focus in family studies is to identify the factors leading to a family's well-being.This issue is often given significant emphasis when formulating government policies relating to the family institution.Under the Ninth Malaysia Plan (RMK 9), the importance of the family institution is a major national agenda.Among others, the strategic thrust in the Ninth Plan is to strengthen family institutions towards creating a resilient and more caring society.The (RM9 plan 15:27:314) states that "Family is the primary determinant of a nation that is healthy, dynamic, productive, and competitive, the programs contribute to strengthening the family unit will continue to be emphasized.Since the change of the structure and relationships, indicated by the increase in the percentage of nuclear families and dual-income, greater efforts will be taken to ensure that the role of the family as basic social and stabilizing care agent for the young and the elderly." Between spouses, issues pertaining to marriage, work, and family are major concerns.These issues cannot be separated from one another and are embedded in the family itself.In this contemporary age, many Malaysian parents emphasise the importance of family development, marital harmony, and a sustainable work-family dynamic.Marital satisfaction, the work-family relationship, and social support factors faced by the head of the family are often given attention in the study of family contextual factors.Studies by researchers found that fathers are often influenced by the marital environment, family support, and work family conflict compared with mothers (Doherty, Koaneski & Erickson 1998).Yet, most family studies look at these factors among mothers only.This is in accordance with the responsibilities in the community in which mothers are often seen to play an important role in the upbringing of the children in the family.In Malaysia, only a few studies in this area have been conducted, thus giving rise to a need for a study that does not differentiate between the roles of the mother and father (Saedah, 2004;Tam, 2004;Yap, 2000, Naemah, Mohd Ismail & Bushrah 2015).In general, there is deficient understanding of the contextual factors concerning how Malaysian fathers care for their children, especially teenagers.Numerous studies have taken into account the important role played by fathers, yet there remains a general lack of understanding of the contextual factors that influence fathers̕ involvement with their adolescent children (Eagle, 1997;Suhatmini, 2000;Kinnunen, Geurts & Mauno, 2004;Simons, Lorenz, Wu & Conger, 1993;Normadinatul Shida, 2002;Lai, 2008;Ahmeduzzaman & Roopnarine, 1992).
Other researchers, such as Simons, Lorenz, Wu and Conger (1993), Bradford (2002), as well as Maurer (2003) found that family support can help fathers exercise their care at home.Additionally, in this study, family support and support from other social groups could help fathers with adolescent child in their rearing role.Although Allen, Herst, Bruck, and Sutton (2000) have found that there is no consistent finding of gender in work family conflict.Kinnenunen et al. (2004) found that women with families who are concerned with work face more difficulties in balancing between work and family compared to men.Crouter, Bumpas, Head and McHale (2001) as well as Strazdins, Clements, Chord, Broom and D'Souza (2006) found that parents who work for long periods will feel the pressure of extra work, less time with the children and are a less functional family.Such are symptoms of depressive disorders and parent involvement in family care is minimal.
Studies of the influence of work and functionality among working parents with children have been conducted by researchers such as Kinnunen and Ulla (1996).They studied the satisfaction and work stress on a sample of 657 children.The analysis focused on four specific domains namely individual, parent-child relationships, marriage and children.The study found that the influence of a father's work has effects on all the four specific domains.A literature review of the relation and family work conflict of marital satisfaction in the 1980s and 1990s was done by Allen et al. (2000).The researchers found only 14 studies that examined the relation between the family work conflict and marital satisfaction.The findings showed a low negative relationship.This gives the impression that the greater the work-family conflict, the poorer the functionality of the marriage.

Methodology
This study adopts a quantitative design through the use of survey questionnaires for collecting data in accordance with the view of Barbie (2001), Frankel and Wallen (2004) as well as Gay (1996) who stated that this method is the simplest and most effective.The population consisted of fathers of students from secondary schools in Selangor Malaysia.The state of Selangor has the largest population in West Peninsular Malaysia and consists of nine districts.The population of each district is divided into urban and suburban.The nine districts are Klang, Kuala Langat, Kuala Selangor, Hulu Langat, Hulu Selangor, Sabak Bernam, Gombak, Petaling Jaya, and Sepang.According to Gay and Airasian (2006), researchers need to select the sample based on the experience and knowledge of the sampled groups.In this case, the sample consisted of fathers with children who are in Form Four and who stay with their fathers.Based on statistical data in the Selangor State Education Department, by 2007, the total population of male and female students in Form Four in the state amounted to 58,486 students.With reference to the sample size determination by Krejcie and Morgan (1970), a total of 382 fathers is the minimum total sample needed to represent the population.

Participants
Participants in this study included those who were (1) the biological father of at least one adolescent (boy or girl aged 15-16 years) and (2) living with their child at home.The age of the participants ranged from 38-50 years old, married and lived with their children.These fathers were asked to complete the questionnaire (Father's Socio-demographic, Kansas Marital Satisfaction Scale, Family Support Scale and Work-Family Conflict Scale).Five hundred questionnaires were distributed to the students at school who then took them home to their fathers.The questionnaires were returned after their fathers had completed them.A total of 413 completed questionnaires were returned.The distribution of the questionnaires returned were 67 from the district of Klang, 27 from Kuala Langat, 23 from Kuala Selangor, 66 from Hulu Langat, 23 from Hulu Selangor, 22 from Sabak Bernam, 60 from Gombak, 106 from Petaling, and 20 from Sepang.

Measurement
Three contextual factors: marital satisfaction, family support, and work-family conflict from one domain of Belsky (1984) model were used in this study.The three instruments used to measure the contextual factors are the Kansas Marital Satisfaction Scale (Schuum 1986, which was adapted and translated to Malay language by Rumaya 1997), Family Support Scale (FSS) (Dunst, Jenkins & Trivette 1984) and Work Family Conflict (WFC) (Stephens & Sommer 1996).

Marital Satisfaction Scale
Marital Satisfaction Scale is one that assesses the relationship with the spouse, satisfaction with the wife as a partner, and satisfaction with expressions of affection in marriage.The scale used in the measurement of the fathers̕ marital satisfaction was the "Kansas Marital Satisfaction Scale" (KMSS) by Schuum (1986) which measures the level of marital satisfaction.The Kansas Marital Satisfaction Scale is an instrument to measure the quality of a marriage (Schumm, Nicholas, Shectman & Grigsby 1983).These tools only measure satisfaction in marriage and have been used by local researchers such as Noralina (1998, 1999), and Rumaya (1999).Respondents were asked to answer the scale by selecting from 'very dissatisfied' (1) to 'very satisfied' (7).The reliability of this instrument was reported in several studies with a Cronbach's alpha from .81 to .98 and it has been used for various populations.

Family Support Scale (FSS)
Family support means warmth, encouragement, and assistance received by friends, neighbours, family members and other individuals by the father towards providing care to young people directly and indirectly (Simons et al., 1993;Hipke 2002).The Family Support Scale (Dunst, Jenkins & Trivette, 1984) consists of informal support of relatives, namely, parents and relatives, support from one's wife, the wife's relatives, siblings, children, neighbours, parents of other people, members of religious groups, social organizations, naming a few.According to Dunst et al. (1984), this scale has been used in several studies to identify the effect of social support on the well-being and health of the parents, the integrity of the family, parents' perceptions of functional relationships, and parent-child interaction styles.The FSS includes 18 items rated on a five-point scale ranging from not at all helpful (1) to extremely helpful (5).This tool has been found in a study conducted on 224 parents (174 mothers and 50 fathers) with a Cronbach's alpha of .70.In this study, the Cronbach ̕ s alpha reliability for relatives of social support (formal) is.65, wife social support is. 65, support relatives (informal) is .81,support of social organization is .84,and support for professional services is .80.Overall, the Cronbach ̕ s alpha reliability index for the Family Support Scale is .86.

Family Work Conflict Scale (WFCS)
Family work conflict means the emotional experience spillover effects from work to family, and from the family to work (Stephens & Sommer 1996).It is used in this study to measure the work conflicts with the family.
Respondents were asked to answer by selecting a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 indicating "most agree" and 5 indicating "least agree."The family work conflict consists of three sub-constructs: time-based conflict, strain-based conflict and behaviour-based conflict.It has been used among workers who have families and children.According to Stephens and Sommer (1996), the reliability of this instrument is at .54 to .85 for time-based conflict, .71 to .88 for strainbased conflict and .46 to .80 for conflict-based behaviour.The Cronbach's alpha reliability index in this study for time-based conflict is .89,for the strain-based conflict is .89,and for behaviour-based conflict, is.80.The Cronbach ̕ s alpha reliability index for the WFCS is .89.

Pilot Study
The first stage of a pilot study aimed to t-test the face validity of the scales.The pilot study was conducted on 20 fathers who have teenagers in Form Four.They were from two secondary schools (urban and suburban) by using 'back translation'.Meanwhile, the second stage study was conducted to see the original translation by using the "counterbalance t-test" (Amla, 1991).The test was administered twice within one week.The first time the test used the original version instrument, while the second test used the Malay translated version.Scores from both t-tests were analysed by searching the index of Cronbach's alpha.Through the correlation test between the two instruments of 'Family Support Scale' (FSS), the alpha value of 0.76 was obtained, while the 'Family Support Scale' translated into Malay language obtained an alpha value of 0.78.The 'Work to

Data Analysis
The t-test analysis was used to test the fathers' contextual factors independent variables such as mother's work status, urban/suburban, and attending parenting programme.The analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to compare the mean of the father's ethnicity, income, and education level with contextual factors, while Pearson's correlation was used to identify the relationship between three variables in the father's contextual factors.

Results and Discussion
and respondents of other ethnicities was small (30%).Many of the fathers were low-income earners (75.4%) and had a low education level (66.8%).The respondents categorised into urban and suburban had a number of similarities.Most mothers were not working (59.3%) and most of the respondents had not attended a parenting programme sponsored by the school (82.8%) as displayed in Table 1.

Contextual factors
Fathers' contextual factors measured the rate of marital satisfaction, family support, and work family conflict.
Research Question 1: (1) What is the level of marital satisfaction, family support, and work family conflict among fathers?
Table 2 shows the sources of contextual (marital satisfaction, family support, and work-family conflict) among fathers.For marital satisfaction, the results show that, overall, fathers receive Referring to Table 3, there is a significant difference between urban and suburban fathers concerning the work-family conflict with the values of t (-2.658) = 411, p <0.05.Fathers who stay in the suburban areas had a higher mean compared to the fathers who live in the urban area.There is also a significant difference between fathers who attended parenting courses compared to those who did not attend with regard to marriage satisfaction with the values of t (2.358) = 400, p <0.05.The mean scores indicate that fathers who attended parenting programme had a higher mean compared to the fathers who had not attended the programme for the factor of marriage satisfaction.There is also a significant difference between those fathers who attended and those who did not attend parenting courses in the factor of work family conflict with the values of t (2.516) = 400, p <0.05.The mean scores indicate that fathers who had attended a parenting course had a higher mean compared to fathers who did  not attend a course for the factor work-family conflict as displayed in Table 3.
Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was used to test the mean differences among fathers who have different socio-economic status based on ethnicity, education, and income.Table 4 shows that there are significant differences between the ethnicity of fathers with a mean contextual factors as displayed in Table 4.
Table 5 shows the Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) between the education of fathers with the contextual factors (marital satisfaction F (7, 395) = .810,p>0.05, work to family conflict F (7, 395) = .426,p> 0.05 and family support F (7, 395) = .331,p> 0.05).The result shows that there is no significant difference between for the overall contextual factors of marital satisfaction F (3,409) =. 000, p < 0.05, work family conflict F (3,409) =.009, p <0.05 and family support F (3,409 ) = .002, p <0.05).Post hoc t-tests were conducted and the results show significant differences between the Malays, Chinese, Indian, and other ethnicity with the the levels of education of the fathers with the contextual factors as displayed in Table 5.
Question 3: Is there a relationship between marital satisfaction, family support, and workfamily conflict among fathers?Table 6 shows the Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) between the income of the fathers with the contextual factors (marital satisfaction F (10, 402) = .315,p>0.05, work family conflict F (10, 402) = .226,p> 0.05 and family social support F (10, 402) = .757,p> 0.05).The result shows that there is no significant between the income of the fathers and the contextual factors as displayed in Table 6.

Relationship between factors in respect to the contextual factors of fathers
In general, the data from Table 7 shows the relationship between factors in the contextual factors.The results show that there is a significant positive relationship between family support with marital satisfaction, where r = .238with a value of p <0.05.This shows that there is a significant correlation between the factor of marriage satisfaction and work-family conflict.This result explains that the father's family support has a good correlation with marital satisfaction; however, the correlation is moderate (r = .238).In the relation between the factor of marital satisfaction with work-family conflict factors, the result shows that r = .305with a value of p <0.05.This shows that there is a significant correlation between marriage satisfaction and work-family conflict.This result explains that the father's work-family conflict had a good correlation with marital satisfaction; however, the relationship is moderate (r = .305).
Compared to the relationship between family support with work-family conflict factors, the result shows that r = -.117 with p values > 0.05.This shows that there is no significant relationship between work-family conflict and family support.This result explains that the father's work-family conflict does not have a good correlation with family support; however, the correlation was weak (r = -.117) as displayed in Table 7.

Conclusion
Several empirical studies (Belsky, 1984;Volling & Belsky, 1991;Doherty, Kouneski & Erickson, 1998) have shown the existence of contextual factors that influence fathers as proposed in Belskys '(1984) model.The present study examines the contextual factors and the relationship between these factors for fathers of adolescent children.Similar to the previous studies conducted by Harris andMorgan (1991), Mc Bride andMills (1993) as well as Bouchard and Lee (2000), a positive correlation between the quality of marriage with the level of involvement of fathers in child care was found.Fathers who received a high level of marital satisfaction through their marriage, have an impact on family life.The fathers in the present study received a high level of marital satisfaction.An important finding of this study is that the factor of marital satisfaction has a good relationship between family support and workfamily conflict factors.The marital satisfaction experienced by the fathers allows them to be more at peace, and, as such, they can serve in the household and build friendly relations with their teenagers.The findings of the study also support the view by Nangle (2003) who thought that marriage satisfaction factors play a major role in the involvement of fathers in child care.As for marriage satisfaction, it can build a harmonious relation through the sharing of parenting duties.These findings support the study by Kinnunen et al. (2004) who found that the marital satisfaction model acts as a predictor of family work conflict.Other contextual factors in this present study are family support.
Overall, the findings from this study show that fathers receive good family support from the mother.With regard to the family, the support of the mothers in the study plays an important role in supporting the father.Receiving support from the mother as a wife to the husband in providing care should not be taken lightly.Supportive wives are of great help to fathers in bringing up their adolescent children.Fathers who have strong support from their wives will take care of their adolescent children well.Therefore, if the support is always present in the family, the process of child rearing is more effective.The major contribution of the mother to the father is likely to be in the form of mental, physical, and emotional support, which is likely to improve her ability to engage adolescent care.Wives play an important role in helping their husbands to nurture adolescent children and it is important to be given priority, as well as parents and other social support networks, such as formal and informal relatives, social organisations, and social services.However, support received by the father from other groups in this study was minimal.Even though fathers receive less support from these networks, they still have relations with these networks.This is because parents, relatives, and siblings do not live near them and do not often see each other.
Another factor, namely work to family conflict plays an important role in terms of determining the role of the father in the care of adolescent children.
Most of the respondents (70 percent) in this study consisted of Malay fathers who are Muslims.Regarding the Islamic perspective implications, the results of the current study have educational contributions, particularly within the Islamic cultural context of Malaysia.The present study has several important implications for research on Muslim father's programmes.First of all, the findings enhance the existing knowledge on Muslim fathers with adolescent received their contextual factor in parenting.Thus, future Islamic parenting programmes can increase Muslim fathers' awareness of the importance of their involvement in the area of developing a marital satisfaction, family support and familywork conflict.This could help them to further improve their relationship with the spouse, family support and balance on family-work conflict.Besides, more informative Islamic parenting workshops on how to improve these factors that are embedded in the family, namely marital satisfaction, family support and familywork conflict should be addressed.The present study provides continuing evidence that Muslim fathers play a prominent role in the well-being of their adolescent children.Hence, this study proposes that any intervention with Islamic religious programme or Islamic parenting to promote family well-being should include the fathers as well.

Table 1 :
Profile of the Study Sample (N=413)Family Conflict Scale' (WFCS) obtained an alpha value of 0.66 and the 'Work to Family Conflict Scale' translated into Malay language obtained an alpha value of 0.65.The FSS and WFCS are considered to be functioning in the study.This indicates that the Malay translated version of the instrument can be used in this study.

Table 3 :
Demographic and Contextual Factors of Fathers Using the t-Test This journal is a member of and subscribes to the principles of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)

Table 4 :
Demographic (Ethnic)and Contextual Factors of Fathers Using ANOVA

Table 5 :
Demographic (Education Level) and Contextual Factors of Fathers Using ANOVA

Table 6 :
Demographic (Income)and Contextual Factors of Fathers Using ANOVA

Table 7 :
Correlation Matrix between Factors for the Contextual Factors of FathersThis journal is a member of and subscribes to the principles of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) Belsky's (1984)rms of time, stress and emotional behaviour in the present study show a moderate level of conflict based on the time, stress, and emotions.The father should be conscious of and given meaningful advice concerning the balance of job with family responsibilities.The willingness of fathers to compensate for the family work conflict will be able to increase the efforts towards improving the life of adolescents in the family.An important finding of this present study is the positive significant relationship between marital satisfaction and the work-family conflict.Although fathers in this study received high satisfaction in marriage compared with a moderate level in work to family correlation, these two factors have positive relationships.The positive relation of these factors reflects the good correlation between the contextual factors inBelsky's (1984)model.This can strengthen the elements in Belsky's model concerning the relationship between all the factors and the family.Based on the respondents' background, this research concludes that the majority of respondents' were ethnic Malays; this study does not reflect on the reality of other ethnic communities, such as ethnic Chinese and Indians.Studies using sampling methods that give representative samples of the Malaysian society according to ethnicity, economic background, and other factors are recommended to substantiate the present findings.