scholarly journals Maternal Work–Life Balance and Children’s Social Adjustment: The Mediating Role of Perceived Stress and Parenting Practices

Author(s):  
Rikuya Hosokawa ◽  
Toshiki Katsura

The participation of women with young children in the Japanese labor force has increased dramatically in recent years, bringing growing potential for conflict between work and family roles amid inadequate social systems, such as childcare support. Thus, work–life balance (WLB) of mothers may influence their children’s mental health and lifestyle. This study aims to clarify the relationship between parents’ WLB and children’s mental health, as well as the underlying factors of parental stress and nurturing attitude. The study is based on a questionnaire survey administered in 2019 to fifth-grade elementary school students and their caregivers in Aichi Prefecture, Japan. The regression results indicated that the higher the work–family negative spillover, the higher the child’s externalizing and internalizing problems, and the higher the positive spillover, the lower the problems and the higher the prosocial behaviors. Path analysis indicates that maternal WLB is negatively and positively related to children’s behavior through maternal stress and parenting practices. The study suggests that maternal WLB is related to children’s emotional and behavioral problems. WLB may impact children’s emotional and behavioral problems through parents’ mental health and involvement with their children, particularly because of work arrangements changing with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Author(s):  
Simon Burnett ◽  
Caroline Gatrell

This chapter analyses methodological issues experienced in the employment of audio teleconference focus groups in fatherhood research. It cites a research project entitled ‘Work Life Balance: Working for Fathers?’, which explores how men with dependent children combine work and family commitments. As part of this research, when recruiting fathers for face-to-face interviews and focus groups proved difficult, scholars utilised the medium of recordable teleconferencing technology. In the context of research on fatherhood, the chapter evaluates the emergent complexities integral to the entire process of running ‘teleconference’ (telecon) focus groups. The first part of the chapter describes the technological and procedural challenges in the commissioning of telecon focus groups, while the second reflects on fathers' confession-like admissions.


PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (8) ◽  
pp. e0256663
Author(s):  
Swathi Pai ◽  
Vathsala Patil ◽  
Rajashree Kamath ◽  
Mansi Mahendra ◽  
Deepak Kumar Singhal ◽  
...  

Background The Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in 2019, has shocked the entire world. As an effort to control the disease spread, the Indian government declared a nationwide lockdown on March 25th, 2020. As dental treatment was considered high risk in the spread of COVID-19, dentistry became one of the most vulnerable professions during this time. Dental professionals had to face job layoffs, salary cuts in professional colleges, closure of private clinics resulting in huge psychological, moral, and financial crises. Studies during the previous and present pandemics have shown mental issues among health care workers necessitating institutional reforms, along with early care and support. A balance in the work-life amongst professionals is the key to better efficiency and, was majorly affected during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown due to sudden unexpected changes. Hence this study was conducted to understand the changes they underwent both at home and professional front with a hypothesis that physical and mental health, activities, relationship status, and workplace influence the work-life balance. Methods A pre-validated questionnaire survey was done on dentists across India. Structural Equation Modelling and path analysis were applied to the data collected. Results The results of the study supported the hypothesis that factors like physical and mental health, activities, relationship status, and workplace influenced the work-life balance directly. A significant imbalance was seen amongst the female dentists. Conclusion The present study proved the unpreparedness among dental professionals. Hence an evolutionary phase in every field with better working protocols, robust mental health support, and a focus on strategies to face future such emergencies is required.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-37
Author(s):  
Toshihiro Okubo ◽  
Atsushi Inoue ◽  
Kozue Sekijima

This paper investigates teleworkers' efficiency in Japan in the COVID-19 era by using unique survey data on telework. Many Japanese workers started teleworking during the pandemic and found both benefits as well as impediments. Overall, we find that telework experience and the work environment (e.g., having clearly specified tasks and a flexible working system), changes in work-life balance (e.g., working time), and good mental health improves teleworkers' efficiency.


2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (3.6) ◽  
pp. 134
Author(s):  
S M. Chockalingam ◽  
P Sudarshan

Human beings in this earth have to work for inevitable reasons. For the purpose of employment people even migrate to their nearest cities or even they may relocate themselves too far off places, due to swiftly growing population across the country and also numbers of people getting qualified degrees have increased a lot. On the other hand scope for employment is considerably reducing day by day. This has made job markets completely employee driven. When job markets become employee driven, by all means employees will extract much work from employees. This will make them spend more and more time at the workplace and less time with their families. The result of this will lead to imbalance between work and family life. This study tries to cover many insights on work life balance especially covering major BPO employees working at Bangalore.  


Pravaha ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 217-232
Author(s):  
Tej Narayan Prasad Nepali

Work- family balance” is a term that refers to an individual’s perceptions of the degree to which s/he is experiencing positive relationships between work and family roles, where the relationships are viewed as compatible and at equilibrium with each other. Like a fulcrum measuring the daily shifting weights of time and energy allocation between work and family life, the term, “workfamily balance,” provides a metaphor to countervail the historical notion that work and family relationships can often be competing, at odds, and conflicting.There was a time when the boundaries between work and home were fairly clear. Today, however, work is likely to invade our personal life — and maintaining work-life balance is no simple task. Family work balance is a complex issue that involves financial values, gender roles, career path, time management and many other factors. Every person and couple will have their own preferences and needs. The problem of maintaining a balance between work life and family life is not a new one. But in the recent few years social scientists have started paying more attention to it. Now there is growing concern in Nepal and experts are of the view that a constant struggle to balance both sets of life will have serious implications on the health of an employee.The seriousness of this problem increases many times in the cases of women workers in our society which is a traditional one and where women are still supposed to have greater family responsibilities. They are expected to look after their children, entertaining the guest, taking care of their parents, in laws and other elderly members of their families as also managing kitchen and other household affairs. Neglecting any of these responsibilities for the sake of discharging work in office or in other institutions where they are employed is not tolerated by their husbands and other male members of the society. We talk of women empowerment but we fail to understand the problems which working women are facing in the tradition bound society like of ours. The study is a pioneering work to investigate into this problem. It is a modest attempt to understand the manner in which women workers try to maintain balance between their work and family lives. The study also explores the ways and means by which female workers can be enabled to maintain proper balance between the two sets of their lives. The findings of this study may be of great use to employers, and business executives as well, who have now come to realize that the responsibility to maintain a healthy work life balance rests on both the organisation and employee. Pravaha Vol. 24, No. 1, 2018, Page: 217-232


2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 41
Author(s):  
Fanny YF Young

This study investigated the relationship of working hour, work-life balance and mental health conditions in full-time retail industry workers in Hong Kong, an area without standard working hour legislation, in a follow up study during reduction in retail sales. Two questionnaire surveys were conducted, one in 2014 and the other one in 2015. Each survey comprised 100 retail industry workers in the same retail industry area in an anonymous basis.  In 2014 the working hour was long (51.92 hours per week). During this reduction in retail sales there was a significant reduction in the originally long working hours (from 51.92 hours to 47.25 hours, p<0.0001), an increase in daily hours of personal or private activities (3.06 hours to 3.606 hours, not statistical significant), a significant increase in self-perceived work-life balance (from 3.76 to 4.51, p=0.0009), a decrease in number of workers having problems due to disturbed work-life balance, and a significant decrease in the high mental health score (from 18.93 to 15.36, p=0.0003) indicating improvement in mental health conditions. The findings provide scientific evidence for policy making, the working hour in an area without standard working hour legislation could be long. Reduction in working hour resulted in an improvement in work-life balance and mental health conditions.


2007 ◽  
pp. 117-136 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalie M. Schmitt ◽  
Andreas Fuchs ◽  
Wilhelm Kirch

2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 279-294 ◽  
Author(s):  
Suzette Dyer ◽  
Yiran Xu ◽  
Paresha Sinha

AbstractIn this article, we examine the postmigration work–life balance or conflict experiences of 15 Chinese-born mothers living in New Zealand. Our analysis contributes theoretically to the work–life balance and migration literatures. It does so by revealing that balance and conflict is influenced by the interrelationship between the socio-cultural, work, and family domains; and that this interrelationship has both a complex and nuanced influence on postmigration balance and conflict. Thus, balance or conflict was influenced by the interrelationship between the participants’ unique experiences within the three domains, including experiencing satisfaction in all three domains and through complex processes of negative spillover, compensation, renegotiation and removal. The postmigration experiences highlight the need for a comprehensive and concerted approach by government, tertiary education institutions, and human resource managers to develop responsive policy initiatives that support migrants to settle into all aspects of their lives.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document