Features (Overload)

• Role overload occurs either when there are too many roles at one time for an individual or roles are changing and too many new roles develop at once. A young person coming into the work force must radically change her lifestyle. The roles of daughter and babysitter have ended, and now, new roles such as wife, mother and worker come to take their place. This transition can be the cause of role overload. On the other hand, those with too many roles, such as a single father that must be both mother and father as well as worker, also can suffer from role overload.
  
  

Features (Conflict)

• Role conflict occurs when two roles overlap too much. Two roles might have contradictory expectations, causing strain. For example, when someone is both father and worker, things expected of him at home might have to be put on hold if work is demanding more of his time. If two co-workers are longtime friends and one is promoted to supervisor, the roles of boss and friend are now contradictory if he must discipline or even fire his former friend.
  
  

Types

• These two types of role-related malfunction result from too much responsibility being placed on one person. In overload, too much is coming too fast. In conflict, the person feels she must "split herself in two" to do her jobs correctly. In both cases, the economy places too much of a burden on social life, leading to either too many roles or too little time.
  
  

Function

• Role overload can lead to extreme stress or depression. This in turn can lead to failure at all of the roles expected of one person. Conflict can create tremendous personal strain and stress. Role conflict can give the sense that the person has no control over life, and that she is bring spread too thin.
  
  

Considerations

• Fragmentation is the basic feeling of not being integral. One is expected to be more than one person. If a person needs to be a father, worker, boss, friend, football coach and the local handyman, it is not out of the question for that man to ask himself who he really is. Much in modern philosophy has taken up the question of integrity and modern fragmentation. When a person is so radically fragmented in roles, it appears natural that the person will begin to question his own identity, wondering what, if anything, lies behind those roles. Questions of identity and alienation become normal in modern social theory as people continue to define themselves under the conditions of extreme fragmentation.