ABSTRACT
Objective: This study investigates associations between work-to-family conflict and parenting practices among lone and partnered working mothers and the role of working from home as a potential resource gain or drain for acting empathetically and supportively towards their children. Background: Emerging evidence suggests that work-to-family conflict reduces responsive parenting practices, yet prior studies have rarely examined disparities by family structure. Although working from home has recently gained in importance in the workforce, there is still little research on its implications for the relationship between work-to-family conflict and the quality of parenting practices. If working from home is not used to do supplemental work during overtime hours, it may free up mothers' time and emotional resources. In turn, this may either buffer the harmful impact of work-to-family conflict on parenting practices or indirectly enhance the quality of parenting practices by reducing work-to-family conflict. This could be particularly beneficial for lone mothers, who experience more role and time strain. Method: Analyses were based on 1,723 working mothers and their reports on 2,820 schoolchildren drawn from a German probability sample that was collected in 2019 (i.e., before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic). Using OLS regression models, we first examined whether work-to-family conflict was associated with four dimensions of verbal parenting practices (i.e., responsive and hostile communication, responsive decision- making, and school involvement at home). Second, we conducted moderation analyses to test differences by working from home (within contract hours and for supplemental work) and family structure with two-way and three-way interactions. Third, we performed mediation analyses to examine the indirect effect of working from home on each parenting dimension mediated by work-to-family conflict. Results: Higher levels of work-to-family conflict were associated with less responsive and more hostile parenting practices. The moderation analyses did not indicate a buffering effect of working from home. Instead, the mediation analyses showed that compared to mothers who worked from home within their contract hours, those who did not work from home or who did supplemental work from home tended to report less empathic parenting practices transmitted through higher levels of work-to-family conflict. Results showed no significant associations for mothers' school involvement at home. Furthermore, no major differences emerged between lone and partnered mothers. Conclusion: Our pre-pandemic results challenge the buffering hypothesis and suggest that working from home can be either a resource gain or drain for the mother-child relationship regardless of family structure, but depending on mothers' opportunity to work from home within the scope of contract hours.
ABSTRACT
The world flipped to remote work overnight with the COVID-19 pandemic. As such, current literature on the pandemic video call work environment is limited and is mainly trade articles. Previous literature used many terms, with one term per study, to evaluate deliberate behaviors where one engaged in an unrelated task with or without a conversation partner. Therefore, this study identified divided presence as the umbrella term to aggregate these behaviors. At this point, divided presence is defined as one's deliberate behavioral choice to divide one's presence between a live conversation partner and at least one other unrelated task simultaneously. This narrative study examined how 21 pharmaceutical or biotechnology professionals who worked remotely at least two days per week and experienced receiving divided presence from colleagues on work video calls in the COVID-19 remote work environment made sense of this experience. This research used real-life scenarios in video calls with 3 participants per call and a follow-up survey to validate themes. Psychological meaningfulness, safety, and availability served as this study's theoretical framework. Ten themes emerged across the call groupings. Findings suggest that when participants received divided presence, they experienced negative, empathetic, and variable emotional impact. The nature of the colleague relationship and the unrelated task were potential mitigating or compounding factors. Power dynamics had an impact and, repeat engagers in divided presence were detrimental to working relationships. Lastly, poorly organized meetings increased undesirable impact from a participant's receiving and propensity to engage in divided presence. This study's findings validated pre-COVID-19 literature, showed that the theoretical framework still works today, and provided challenges to literature with siloed lenses. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)