In European countries, where 70% of couples are dual earners, balancing work and home responsibilities is a significant challenge, particularly for working parents. Family-work conflict occurs when family demands drain resources, limiting the ability to meet work expectations and potentially reducing perceptions of career success. This may require working parents to resort to shortcuts to efficiently complete tasks while managing family demands. Using longitudinal data from 373 employed parents and a correlated random effects approach, this study integrates literature on role conflict, coping, and constructive deviance, examining whether effectiveness rule-breaking, i.e., breaking rules to work more effectively, can mitigate the negative impact of family-work conflict on subjective career success and whether these effects vary by parents’ gender. Findings reveal that increases in family-work conflict reduce perceptions of career success, particularly among men. While effectiveness rule-breaking mitigates the negative effects of family-work conflict for both genders, significant within-person interaction effects are observed only for women. This research provides initial empirical insights into effectiveness rule-breaking as a deviant coping strategy for alleviating negative effects of family-work conflict, underscoring the importance of organizations acknowledging the prevalence of effectiveness rule-breaking and offering alternative support strategies to help working parents of both genders manage family-work conflict effectively.
