Wednesday 17 October 2012

Daily management of work and family goals in employed parents

an article by Christiane A. Hoppmann (University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada) and Petra L. Klumb (University of Fribourg, Switzerland) published in Journal of Vocational Behavior Volume 81 Issue 2 (October 2012)

Abstract

This study uses one-week time-sampling information from 104 employed parents with pre-school children to examine the association between daily workloads, control strategies, and goal progress.

In addition, it examines relationships between work- and family-goal progress and important stress indices such as positive/negative affect and cortisol levels.

Multilevel models indicate that family-specific control strategies fostered daily family-goal progress whereas work-specific control strategies were unrelated to daily work-goal progress.

Furthermore, employed parents who successfully pursued their work and family goals as part of their daily life routines reported concurrent higher positive and lower negative affect.

Only family-goal progress was associated with reduced cortisol secretion whereas work-goal progress was not.

Our findings illustrate the usefulness of examining the dynamic interplay between daily workloads, control strategies, goal progress, and stress in the daily lives of employed parents and suggest that the underlying mechanisms may be domain-specific.

Highlights

► We examine control strategies, daily goal pursuits, and health in employed parents.
► Control strategies foster daily family-goal pursuits but not work-goal pursuits.
► Successfully pursuing work- and family-goals is associated with better affect quality.
► Family-goal pursuits are also associated with reduced cortisol whereas work-goal pursuits are not.
► Findings illustrate the domain-specificity of control- goal pursuit-health links.


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