had? These kinds of questions have interested researchers investigating the relationships
between stressors in different domains of life and they are becoming increasingly
important as the boundaries between work and home life are reduced. More women
(including those with young children) are now working so both men and women
occupy potentially conflicting roles. Furthermore, new technologies such as laptop
computers, emails and mobile phones mean that employees can work anywhere. This
is linked to a trend for work to be more flexible with more people working outside
the traditional 9-to-5 day to cater for demands for 24-hour services (e.g. supermarkets,
call centres) as well as to facilitate working in global organizations operating across time
zones. This has led to an increasing concern among employees about lack of work–life
balance (Major and Germano, 2006).
Three types of relationships between work and home life have been considered
(Staines, 1980). First, the impact of work was hypothesized to spillover to affect the
individual at home. For example, those experiencing negative emotions at work would
take these to the home environment. However, this hypothesis has been extended
beyond stressors and is assumed to also apply to activities and behaviour. So those with
active and stimulating jobs would seek similar types of experience out of work. In
contrast the compensation hypothesis, suggested that, for example, those with active
stimulating jobs might seek calm and undemanding leisure activities and vice versa.
A third hypothesis, the segmentation hypothesis, suggested no relationship, implying
that work and non-work domains are independent (Staines, 1980). Early studies have
tended to support the spillover hypothesis. For example, Meissner (1971) found that
individuals who were isolated at work were also isolated at home. However, most
studies were cross-sectional leaving the direction of causation unclear. Did work
stressors spillover to the home or were home stressors affecting people at work, or was
a third variable (such as personality) responsible for the link? Longitudinal studies have
helped clarify these relationships. For example, Williams and Alliger (1994) showed
that spillover occurs in both directions, with moods experienced in one environment
influencing those in the other. However, in common with most other studies, they
found that work seems to interfere more with family life than vice versa.
More recently these findings have been extended by examining crossover of stress.
This is the idea that stressors in one environment (usually work) not only affect the
individual directly experiencing them when that person is at home but also affect others
who share the home environment. Support for this phenomenon has now been found
in numerous studies (Bakker, Westman and van Emmerik, 2009). For example, a study
of more than 2,000 couples found striking evidence that workplace aggression
experienced by one member of a couple was associated with an increase in psycho -
logical distress in their partner (Haines, Marchand and Harvey, 2006). Song et al. (2011)
got couples to complete daily diaries and found crossover between unemployed and
employed partners. Children have also been found to suffer from their parents’ work
stressors. Repetti and Wood (1997) studied working mothers and their pre-school chil -
dren in a laboratory setting after work for five consecutive days. They found that on
days when they reported heavier workloads, or where they had experienced
interpersonal conflicts, the mothers were more withdrawn from their children. For
men, the link between work stress and negative interaction with children seems to be
moderated by neuroticism, that is, for men high in neuroticism job stress was linked
to more negative emotional response to their children (Wang, Repetti and Campos,
2011).
STRESS AND HEALTH IN CONTEXT 79