Childrearing Stages and Work–Family Conflict: The Role of Job Demands and Resources

ObjectiveThis study investigates how status gains in job authority over time are related to three work‐ and family‐related stressors: job pressure, role blurring, and work‐to‐family conflict.BackgroundFamily scholars have long been interested in identifying work conditions as sources of change and stress in family life. Sociologists have devoted much effort in understanding the consequences of stratification for stress exposure—especially for those individuals with status‐based disadvantages. The present study advances work–family research by shifting focus to the status‐based stress exposure of individuals who transition into higher status positions in the workplace.MethodThis study uses four waves of panel data from the Canadian Work, Stress, and Health Study from 2011 to 2017 (N = 8,240 observations in pooled analysis). We use fixed effects regression techniques to analyze this diverse sample of Canadian workers with multi‐item measures of focal variables.ResultsWe find that increases in job authority are associated with increases in job pressure, role blurring, and work‐to‐family conflict. Moreover, we find that supervisor support is an effective workplace resource to alleviate some of the stress that comes with greater workplace power.ConclusionThese findings highlight nuances embedded in the status boost of gaining greater authority in the workplace by revealing some of its downsides for work‐related pressures and strains in the work–family interface. We discuss the implications of these results for stratification and work–family stress research by integrating insights from the stress of higher status and job demands–resources models.

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

With Greater Power Comes Greater Stress? Authority, Supervisor Support, and Work‐Family Strains

Badawy

Schieman

2020

“…Indeed, physical care of young children is labor intensive and demanding, and parents with younger minor children sleep less than parents with older minor children (Hagen, Mirer, Palta, & Peppard, ). Employed mothers feel more work–family conflict when children are infants or toddlers than when children are in third or fifth grades in part because mothers with very young children feel less support in the workplace (Nomaguchi & Fettro, ). Yet, caring for infants and toddlers is related to more life satisfaction (Pollmann‐Schult, ), greater self‐esteem, self‐efficacy, and less depression (Nomaguchi, ) than caring for school‐age and teenage children.…”

Section: A Life Course Perspectivementioning

confidence: 99%

Parenthood and Well‐Being: A Decade in Review

Nomaguchi

Milkie

2020

Self Cite

408

363

Understanding social aspects of parental well‐being is vital because parents' welfare has implications not only for the parents themselves but also for child development, fertility, and the overall health of a society. This article provides a critical review of scholarship on parenthood and well‐being in advanced economies published from 2010 to 2019. It focuses on the role of social, economic, cultural, and institutional contexts of parenting in influencing adult well‐being. The authors identify major themes, achievements, and challenges and organize the review around the demands‐rewards perspective and two other theoretical frameworks: the stress process model and the life course perspective. The analysis shows that rising economic insecurities and inequalities and a diffusion of intensive parenting ideology were major social contexts of parenting in the 2010s. Scholarship linking parenting contexts and parental well‐being illuminated how stressors related to providing and caring for children could unjustly burden some parents, especially mothers, those with fewer socioeconomic resources, and those with marginalized statuses. In that vein, researchers continued to emphasize how stressors diverged by parents' socioeconomic status, gender, and partnership status, with new attention to strains experienced by racial/ethnic minority, immigrant, and sexual minority parents. Scholars' comparisons of parents' positions in various countries expanded, enhancing knowledge regarding specific policy supports that allow parents to thrive. Articulating future research within a stress process model framework, the authors show vibrant theoretical pathways, including conceptualizing potential parental social supports at multiple levels, attending to the intersection of multiple social locations of parents, and renewing attention to local contextual factors and parenting life stages.

“…Unlike housework, the very nature of parenting work changes across childrearing stages. When children are younger, and there are high physical care demands, mothers perceive more job pressure, less supervisor support, and diminished career options than when their children are school aged (Nomaguchi & Fettro, ). As children grow, physical care demands are replaced by parents' focus on supervision and enhancing cognitive (e.g., reading, homework) and socioemotional (e.g., friendships, emotion regulation) development.…”

Section: Unpaid Work and Familiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Work and Family in the Second Decade of the 21st Century

Perry‐Jenkins

Gerstel

2020

190

123

In the second decade of the 21st century, research on work and family from multiple disciplines flourished. The goal of this review is to capture the scope of this work–family literature and to highlight both the valuable advances and problematic omissions. In synthesizing this literature, the authors show that numerous scholars conducted studies and refined theories that addressed gender, but far fewer examined racial and class heterogeneity. They argue that examining heterogeneity changes the understanding of work–family relations. After briefly introducing the broad social, political, and economic context in which diverse work–family connections developed, this review uses this context to address the following three main themes, each with subtopics: (a) unpaid work including housework, parenting as work, and kin work; (b) paid work including work timing and hours, money (i.e., motherhood penalty, fatherhood bonus, marriage bonus, kin care penalty), relationships (i.e., coworkers, supervisors), and work experiences (i.e., complexity, autonomy, urgency); and (c) work–family policies (i.e., scheduling and child care). Given the breadth of the work–family literature, this review is not exhaustive but, rather, the authors synthesize key findings on each topic followed by a critique, especially with regard to the analyses of differences and inequalities around gender, race, ethnicity, and social class.