This Is Why You Should Stop Calling Your Women Workers At Home
You're helping your daughter with homework when a work email comes in, which you dutifully reply to. If you're a man, you feel you're a master at juggling work and family demands. If you're a woman, this blurred work-family moment probably leaves you with a lingering feeling of guilt, according to a new study published in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior.
The study analyzed data from the Work, Stress, and Health survey, which involved telephone interviews of 1,042 Americans conducted in 2005. The survey asked:
- how often they received work interruptions at home
- about mood and guilt, including "In the past seven days, on how many days have you felt guilty?" and how often the participants "felt that everything was an effort," "felt tired or run down," "had trouble keeping your mind on what you were doing," and "felt you couldn't get going."
- how often subjects felt they didn't have enough time or energy to fulfill their roles as parents because of their jobs.
- Women reported higher levels of guilt and distress compared to men.
- Women who frequently received work related phone calls, texts or emails while at home reported higher levels of psychological distress.
- Women were as good at juggling work and home responsibilities as men, but the work interruptions made left women feeling guilty.
Despite the fact that family structures and parenting roles have evolved, i.e., we are largely a dual-income society, the culture still perpetuates old-fashioned gender norms. "In our study, we speculate that the guilt women experience in response to work contact may be a consequence of them evaluating themselves against these traditional cultural norms about the role of women in the household," says Paul Glavin, a co-author of the study from the University of Toronto.
Men, supported by the traditional idea of their role as breadwinner, are comfortable dealing with work interruptions at home if need be (to fulfill this provider role). But women, who may feel tension from their competing roles as worker and mother, feel guilty when one role steps on the toes of the other. Guilt can chip away at a person's sense of self worth. It is defined as "an unpleasant thought or feeling that involves the violation of a moral or social standard," according to the study.
Handling Work Intrusions at Home
What should women do to cope with the inevitable after-hours emails?
- Ask yourself, why you feel guilty. One reason may be that traditional gender role stereotypes are still being perpetuated in the media, says Glavin. It may help to understand that the guilt they may feel stems from lingering gender ideas that no longer may be applicable to their life.
- Realize that although you may be able to handle a volley of work emails without it noticeably interfering with your role as a mother, it may leave you feeling that you somehow failed as a parent. Women tend to feel more of a tug of war between their two roles as bread winner and mother.
- Give yourself a proscribed time to check your emails and texts while at home and keep your phone out of sight and earshot. Handle the emails during that 10 or 15 minutes that you've allowed. This can give you a sense of control over the interruptions.
Related:
- Sleep Deprivation: The Surprising Causes and Solutions
- Getting a Cold? Finally Something that Works
- Cell Phone Radiation Study: 9 Ways to Be Safer
Laurie Tarkan is an award-winning health journalist who writes for the New York Times, national magazines and websites including Health, Prevention, iVillage and the Huffington Post. Follow her on twitter.
image courtesy of flickr user, quinn.anya