Parents Between Family and Work: The Role of Psychological Needs Satisfaction

The traditional family, today, is outclassed by the spread of dual-career families (Gahlawat et al., 2019), hence the need to seek a balance in the management of work and family and to pay attention to what can affect individual well-being. Through attention to the quality of contexts, it is possible to study those constructs considered fundamental for psychological functionality as motivation and basic psychological needs. This study, therefore, analyzes a model that validates the mediating role of needs between work and family motivation and work and family satisfaction, in 208 dual-career parenting couples. Analyzes have shown that needs mediate the effect of motivations on satisfaction outcomes. Motivation, encouraging needs satisfaction, contributes to results of greater satisfaction in the domains of interest. These results, in line with the most recent SDT contributions (Ryan & Deci, 2017), confirm the mediation role of needs as a guarantee of greater well-being results.