The Study Of The Relation Between Value Orientation, Work-family Conflict And Mental Health Of Married Career Women

Women's values have changed greatly with changes of Chinese social structure. Career women, as main components of female, have various value orientations. Career women are important components of human resources for building a harmonious society, who play dual roles in both society and family. Owing to limited time and energy, there are always conflicts to be both a worthy wife and mother and a qualified staff member for married career women. They have different feelings to the degree of work-family conflict because of their different values and present situation of life and working. The studies proved that work-family conflict will bring about many consequences to a person's physical and mental health.The main purpose of this study is to find regularities and provide theoretical basis for improving married career women's mental health by investigating married career women's value orientation, work-family conflict, and their present situation of physical and mental health as well as the relation between them.Based on the literature analysis and following the principles of combining quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis, the writer used interview, questionnaire and more types of statistic analysis methods, examined married career women's value orientation, work-family conflict, and present situation of mental health as well as the influence factors on them and explores the relation between them. The findings of this research show:1. In modern times, married career women's value orientation have pluralistic and positive tendency and are in keeping with principal values advocated by society.2. To some degree, age, place of residence, level of education, and profession affect married career women's some aspects of value orientation.3. Married career women feel the work-family conflict is not so serious in general. The conflicts are embodied in three aspects: work interferes with family; family interferes with work; work and family interfere with each other. The proportion of the first kind is higher than the other two.4. The background factors influencing work-family conflict include place of residence, profession, overtime hours per month, family members who need looking after, percentage of women's wages in family's income, working timetable of their mates, family members living in the same house, and persons who can help to do the housework, etc.5. Married career women's overall levels of mental health are relatively high; however, 23 percent women's mental health levels are relatively low, which should be paid more attention.6. Family, money and power, group psychology and a sense of identity, and human relations in value orientation correlated positively with the three aspects in work-family conflict, to which money and power have a prominent predictive function.7. In general, value orientation does not correlate with mental health. They affect little with each other.8. work-family Conflict correlate positively with mental symptoms, and correlative degree is high. "Work interferes with family" and "work and family interfere with each other" have a prominent and positive predictive function to mental symptoms.9. Family, money and power, group psychology and a sense of identity, and human relations in value orientation have a strong and positive predictive function to work-family conflict, through which the four factors influence mental symptoms strongly and positively.10. For married career women, the effective strategies of reducing work-family conflict are changing traditional views on values, treating work and life positively, seeking effective social supports and communicating with others actively.