Too much to handle? Trajectories of work-home conflict as the family grows and its impact on parents' mental health.

J Occup Health Psychol

University of Applied Sciences and Medical University, MSH Medical School Hamburg, Faculty of Medicine, Institute for Systems Medicine.

Published: February 2025

Based on the conservation of resources model we examined the trajectories of work-home conflict (WHC) for women and their partners in the context of the major life event of having a(nother) child and mothers' subsequent return to work. We further examined how these trajectories relate to both parents' mental health. In the context of a cohort study (the "DResdner Studie zu Elternschaft, Arbeit und Mentaler Gesundheit"-Dresden Study on Parenting, Work, and Mental Health), we examined 347 women and 223 men at three measurement points: during pregnancy (Time 1), 14 months after birth (Time 2), and 2 years after birth (Time 3; when all women had returned to work). We found three WHC profiles for women: (a) a low-WHC profile, (b) an average-WHC profile, and (c) a high-and-increasing-WHC profile. All profiles differed in their starting levels. Overall, women with a low-WHC profile reported the best mental health, while the other profiles showed poorer mental health. Partners of women with these latter profiles (b and c) reported comparable mental health, but partners of women with low-WHC profile reported partly poorer mental health. Similar patterns were found for subsamples of couples where the women had returned to work prior to Time 2 and a subsample of first-time parents. We conclude that high and average initial levels of WHC are required for the birth of a child to trigger a resource loss which manifests in worse mental health among women. We integrate the findings with respect to conservation of resources model theory and identify the advantages and limitations of the resource perspective in interpreting WHC trajectory outcomes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Download full-text PDF

Source
http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/ocp0000394DOI Listing

Publication Analysis

Top Keywords

mental health
32
women low-whc
12
low-whc profile
12
women
9
trajectories work-home
8
work-home conflict
8
mental
8
parents' mental
8
health
8
conservation resources
8

Similar Publications

Introduction: A better understanding of who will develop dementia can inform patient care. Although MRI offers prognostic insights, access is limited globally, whereas CT-imaging is readily available in acute stroke. We explored the prognostic utility of acute CT-imaging for predicting dementia.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Media portrayals inform understandings of mental illness; yet little research has investigated representations of characters with psychosis in fictional television programming.

Aims: This study examined the valence and trends regarding representations of people with psychosis in popular fictional television programing in the United States, one of the most influential markets in the world.

Methods: A content analysis was conducted of the 50 most-watched American primetime fictional television shows from 2011 to 2021.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Intergenerational connectedness broadly encompasses relations among humans, lands, and all living and spiritual beings, and functions as an important part of Indigenous well-being. Many public health campaigns and interventions aim to promote connectedness to support holistic wellness and reduce health inequities. Currently, however, there are no measurement tools to assess intergenerational connectedness to support culturally grounded research and program evaluation.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Aims: To examine the risk of perinatal mental illness, including new diagnoses and recurrent use of mental healthcare, comparing women with and without traumatic brain injury (TBI), and to identify injury-related factors associated with these outcomes among women with TBI.

Methods: We conducted a population-based cohort study in Ontario, Canada, of all obstetrical deliveries to women in 2012-2021, excluding those with mental healthcare use in the year before conception. The cohort was stratified into women with no remote mental illness history (to identify new mental illness diagnoses between conception and 365 days postpartum) and those with a remote mental illness history (to identify recurrent illnesses).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Population-level preventive interventions are urgently needed and may be effective for psychosis due to social determinants. We tested three syndemic models along pathways from childhood adversity (CA) to psychotic spectrum disorder (PSD) and their implications for prevention.

Methods: Cross-sectional data from 7461 British men surveyed in 5 population subgroups.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Want AI Summaries of new PubMed Abstracts delivered to your In-box?

Enter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!