Work Hours and Work-Family Conflict

Work Hours and Work-Family Conflict

• Americans work longer hours than workers in most European countries and now exceed the working hours of even Japanese
• There is a reasonably extensive body of evidence connecting work hours to poor health outcomes.

1. This relates to hypertension (showing the connection between hypertension and long working hours)
2. They found that compared to people who worked less than 40 hours a week, those who worked more than 51 hours were 29% more likely to report having hypertension, even after statistically controlling for variables such as socioeconomic status, gender, age, diabetes, tobacco use, sedentary lifestyle, and body mass index.

• Long work hours increase the likelihood that people will face a conflict between work and family responsibilities

1. Work-family conflict is a form of stress and has been found to influence health and health-related behaviors.
2. Frone, Russell, and Barnes (1996), using two random samples of employed parents, found that work-family conflict was related to alcohol use, depression, and poor physical health.
3. Moreover, work-family conflict is related to anxiety, substance abuse, and substance dependence (Frone, 2000).
4. Depending on the type and degree of work-family conflict and the particular disorder being investigated, employees were between 2 and 30 times more likely to experience a significant mental health problem if they experienced work-family conflict compared to people who did not.

• The only major piece of legislation designed to help Americans manage work and life balance is the Family and Medical Leave Act which was passed in 1993. The United States today has the most family-hostile public policy in the developed world due to a long-standing political impasse. 

3 faces of work family conflict

• Low-income families, defined as the bottom one-third of families in terms of income.
• Professional-managerial families, defined as families with incomes in the top 20 percent, in which at least one adult is a college graduate
• Families in the remaining percent of incomes: the Missing Middle—

Yet, from a policy standpoint, each group needs four basic kinds of supports and protections Americans now lack:

• Short-term and extended leaves from work, including paid time off for family and medical leave and paid sick days.
• Workplace flexibility to allow families to plan their work lives and their family lives.
• High-quality and affordable childcare so that breadwinners can concentrate on work at work, and
• Freedom from discrimination based on family responsibilities.

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sources:

1. https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/economy/reports/2010/01/25/7194/the-three-faces-of-work-family-conflict/
2. Week 8 article Building sustainable organizations: the human factor

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