Elsevier

Social Science & Medicine

Volume 115, August 2014, Pages 130-138
Social Science & Medicine

Has work replaced home as a haven? Re-examining Arlie Hochschild's Time Bind proposition with objective stress data

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2014.04.047Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Participants had lower levels of physiological stress when at work than at home.

  • Those with higher incomes reported more stress when at work than at home.

  • Women reported significantly greater happiness when at work than at home.

  • Those with no children at home reported less stress when at work than at home.

  • Participants reported higher stress levels on work days than on non-work days.

Abstract

Using innovative data with objective and subjective measures of stress collected from 122 employed men and women, this paper tests the thesis of the Time Bind by asking whether people report lower stress levels at work than at home. The study finds consistent support for the Time Bind hypothesis when examining objective stress data: when participants were at work they had lower values of the stress hormone cortisol than when they were at home. Two variables moderated this association – income and children at home – such that the work as haven effect was stronger for those with lower incomes and no children living at home. Participants also, however, consistently reported higher subjective stress levels on work days than on non-work days, which is in direct contrast to the Time Bind hypothesis. Although our overall findings support Hochschild's hypothesis that stress levels are lower at work, it appears that combining work and home increases people's subjective experience of daily stress.

Introduction

In 1997's The Time Bind, Arlie Hochschild wrote that home life had become so stressful that people were going to work to escape the strains of home. She wrote, “Home had become work and work had become home.” (Hochschild, 1997: 38). A study published around that time seemed, at least partially, to support this conclusion; this was particularly so for women, finding that women reported greater positive affect while at work whereas men reported more positive emotional states at home (Larson et al., 1994). Furthermore, both studies suggested that this reversal had occurred across socio-economic status (Hochschild, 1997, Larson et al., 1994). In contrast, although not directly testing the perception of stress, more recent research has suggested that neither men nor women are voluntarily increasing their work hours to escape the burdens of home (Maume and Bellas, 2001), that both men and women have higher satisfaction levels at home than at work (Kiecolt, 2003), that those more satisfied with work or less satisfied with home do not work more hours or desire to do so (Brown and Booth, 2002), and that people's experience of the “time bind” are closely tied to their social class and occupational status (Jacobs and Gerson, 2004).

Yet, there has been, to our knowledge, no attempts to empirically test Hochschild's Time Bind proposition that work may be less stressful than home, “the work as haven” hypothesis. Testing the work as haven hypothesis is a within-person question that is optimally tested with data assessing (within the same individuals over time) whether stress levels differ as individuals go from home to work and back home again. Yet, between-person data is often employed to test the hypothesis; such data are usually assessed at a single time point and therefore address a different question (e.g., do people who work the most hours have, on average, the lowest levels of stress). In other words, the between-person data does not examine the dynamic process that is proposed to occur within individuals in the Time Bind, but rather compares averages across people.

Although work-life conflict has been a much researched area in recent years and can be a source of chronic stress (see Bass et al., 2009, Bellavia and Frone, 2005), there has been relatively little research comparing stress levels at work to stress levels at home. For example, Larson et al. (1994) looked at mood at home and at work, but did not include measures of stress. As the majority of families with children no longer have a stay-at-home mother taking care of the domestic sphere (Bianchi et al., 2006), home life may be an additional source of stress and continued work. In contrast, work provides important health benefits, particularly to women, and provides additional stimulation outside of the home (Frech and Damaske, 2012, Lewis, 2003, Ross and Mirowsky, 1995). Given that work-family conflict is experienced differently across socioeconomic status (SES), gender, marital status, and presence of children in the home (Frone et al., 1992, Jacobs and Gerson, 2004, Marshall and Barnett, 1992, Sarkisian and Gerstel, 2006, Schnittker, 2007), there may be significant variation in the experience of stress at home and at work across these groups.

This paper expands on prior literature and tests the work as haven hypothesis by asking whether people experience and report lower stress levels at work than at home. Moreover, it expands on Hochschild's research by testing the proposition that the within-person relationship between location (work versus home) and stress is moderated by between-person workplace characteristics (i.e., SES/occupational status and job satisfaction) and home life demographics (i.e., gender, marital status, and the presence of children at home). In the present study, stress was measured both subjectively (using self-reports) and objectively (using the stress hormone cortisol) six times each day over a period of three days, allowing us to capture stress patterns as a function of location (work vs home). Our objective measure of stress, salivary cortisol, becomes elevated as part of the biological stress response; thus, high cortisol levels are an objective indicative of greater stress (Smyth et al., 1998). Finally, in addition to stress, we report on subjective assessments of one's positive affect as these effects may be distinct from stress (cf. Larson et al., 1994). The use of both subjective and objective measures of stress repeatedly assessed while individuals are at home and at work allows for a more complete testing of the work as haven hypothesis.

Section snippets

Theoretical perspectives on work-life stress

Researchers have noted that there is a “career mystique mismatch” in which work organizations' policies, practices, and norms rarely accommodate workers' responsibilities and relationships outside of work (Moen et al., 2013: 82). The demanded devotion to paid work may crowd out time for other tasks, place strain on workers, and create work-life conflict (Moen et al., 2013). Conflict between work and family is a “chronic stressor” that is associated with negative physical and emotional health

Participants

Participants were recruited from the greater metropolitan area of a mid-sized city in the Northeast US via random calls from a local telephone directory and from public listings on a university email news alert and local event websites. The range of recruitment methods ensured that we would reach individuals across job types, thus increasing the generalizability of the sample. Each individual contacted, regardless of method, was provided the same information about participating in the study.

Results

H1

The Time Bind hypothesis

As can be seen from Table 2, the participant's location did not impact positive mood. In line with the work as haven hypothesis, however, participants had lower levels of cortisol when at work compared to when those same participants reported being at home. In contrast to expectations, participants' reported subjective stress levels were higher on work days than on non-work days, and participants reported marginally more subjective stress when they were are work compared

Discussion

The present study makes a novel contribution to the literature on work-family and stress by finding consistent support for the work as haven hypothesis when examining ecologically valid physiological stress data (using the biomarker salivary cortisol). Overall, participants had lower cortisol when they were at work than when they were at home. Two variables moderated this association – income and children at home – such that the home versus work effect was stronger for those with lower incomes

Limitations

Despite the use of an innovative data capture approach and objective stress measurement, this study has several measurement limitations. Education, income, and occupational status may be inadequate proxies for some of the particular workplace characteristics that are associated with stress, such as high status, autonomy, steady hours, and long hours. Job satisfaction may be an inadequate proxy for pressure at work, unstable work, variable work hours, and schedule fit. We lacked a measure of

Conclusion

Ultimately, is work a haven from the stress of home? We find that a majority of participants had lower objective stress levels at work than they did at home, as indexed by the physiological stress marker cortisol, but did not observe this effect in subjective stress reports. Supporting the stress process model, the stress-reducing benefits of work were not, however, equally distributed across social statuses. We document differences in parental status and income on cortisol levels, as well as

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Adrianne Frech and members of the School of Labor and Employment Relations faculty workshop at The Pennsylvania State University for their helpful comments on earlier drafts. The first author acknowledges support provided by the Population Research Institute at Penn State University, which is supported by an infrastructure grant by the National Institutes of Health (2R24HD041025). The second author acknowledges support for the data collection from the Gallup Organization.

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    The first author acknowledges support provided by the Population Research Center at Penn State University, which is supported by an infrastructure grant by the National Institutes of Health (2R24HD041025-11). The second author acknowledges support for the data collection from the Gallup Organization.

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