Conditions of work today—both paid work and unpaid care work—are out of sync with optimal mental health and an equitable society. For paid work, even if well compensated and bounded to a reasonable number of hours, conditions are often taxing or noxious. Common problems like irregular hours, tight deadlines, or working with too few staff can affect mental health. Furthermore, these work stressors can radiate out from workers to their partners and children, amplifying their impact. Today many people feel unappreciated, overworked, conflicted, uncertain, surveilled, and burnt out as work stressors seem to encroach more deeply upon the well-being of families. Unpaid care work—labor within a household caring for one of its members, such as children, elderly, or the ill—continues to go unrecognized as a public good and is unequally distributed across gender lines. Though unpaid care work can be rewarding, it is taxing for mental health when unsupported by those structures that can provide some aid in these huge responsibilities.
In this essay, as work-family researchers focused on the demands and rewards of work and care, we provide insights into key work conditions that matter deeply for the mental health of family members. We consider both paid and unpaid work, and their intersection, in thinking about the effects of work on family members’ well-being. We move away from the notion of “balance” between spheres of work and family, which focuses on individuals’ adaptive strategies as a solution. Instead, we emphasize fixing the structure of work and its intrusions into family life to realize a form of work-family justice, in which the negative conditions of workers and carers are addressed. We highlight inequalities across workers and note that improving work conditions and how work intersects with family life will most help the more marginalized—those with low-wage jobs, migrant workers, and women, for example. That said, even the most privileged workers—such as professionals who are sometimes able to choose remote work—may require changes to toxic elements of work, such as overwork, to reduce negative impact on their mental health and the well-being of their families. Work needs to be more in sync with the ways people need and want to live.
Unpaid Care Work and Mental Health
What has come to be known as the “BBC Dad” video has become an iconic image of work-family conflict. In the video, a professor who is being interviewed over the web on a live TV news segment is interrupted when his two very young children burst into his home office while he is “at work.” His wife comically attempts to drag the kids out from the scene. The two worlds this father lives in literally colliding illustrates the problematic work-family interface that many experience. Centering the mother in the BBC clip, we see that the flip side of such lighthearted moments is the oftentimes overlooked arduous and relentless stressors associated with care work. The “BBC Mom’s” job is arguably more difficult and stressful than the BBC Dad’s, whom she is seen supporting. Additionally, unpaid care work is 24-7, lower-status, and potentially affects mothers’ future work prospects.
Childcare can be stressful under difficult conditions, such as when social supports are weak. The necessity of high-quality childcare beyond the family unit became increasingly clear during the pandemic. Although care work is needed for the economy and for raising future good citizens, it is onerous work that can tax mental health, particularly in combination with paid work.
One way to make work more in sync with a healthy family life is to make it more equitable across gender. For unpaid care work, inequalities hurt women’s well-being, not to mention that mothers of young children and daughters of elderly parents have unequal burdens of labor, less pay and prestige, and fewer job opportunities. The good news is that there are ways these inequalities can be reduced. Some studies in the U.S. and Canada show how, when men were working remotely from home due to the pandemic, they were taking on a greater share of childcare and housework, though the new care work of supervising virtual school was primarily the purview of moms. Men proportionately increased their share of domestic work when they were around the home more, which is why working from home or “use it or lose it” paternity leave has the potential to bolster equality and thus better support the well-being of mothers. Another way is the provision of high-quality and low-cost childcare outside the home. Indeed, most experts in the field believe universal childcare is a key policy that would support workers and parents.
In sum, the place of care work for mental health is underappreciated—and needs to be better supported for the well-being of family members, given its arduous, low-status, unpaid, and absolutely crucial function for the mental and physical well-being of children, the elderly, and the ill or disabled. We’ve not only neglected unpaid carers in our measures of the economy, we’ve also grossly underestimated how supporting care of family members can create better well-being. Building the structures outside the family that support carers—including through childcare centers, schools, and cash payments—needs to be robust. Moreover, for optimal health, carers need rejuvenation through leisure as well as flexible and quality paid work for themselves and/or partners.
Conditions of Paid Work and Mental Health
Work can be creative, inspiring, meaningful, and well compensated. Still, despite work being potentially important for identity and connection, there are many problems with the way work is organized and supported. We categorize these stressors broadly into: (1) the time and timing of work; (2) other people at work, especially supervisors; and (3) qualities of work itself. All can impact the mental well-being of employees and bleed negatively into family life.
The time and timing of work. Today, especially in the service industry, workers’ hours and work schedules vary day-to-day. The lack of work, uncertainty about the security of work, or similar disruptions to a regular steady work life intrudes into health. In this respect, women and low-wage workers are more at risk for a chronicity that has a long reach into their later health, with more crossover stress to family members, than men and higher-wage workers. Uncertainty in schedules also impinges on the mental health of family members, as unpredictable schedules disrupt family members and create distress among parents. For those in service work, especially mothers, schedule volatility links to difficulties arranging care for children, and the reverberations of these secondary stressors can ripple through family life. Parents feel squeezed for time with children. On average, parents are happier when spending time with children than being without them. When employed parents feel as if they are not spending enough time with children, their mental health suffers.
Schedule control and autonomy, including the freedom to decide how one’s job gets done, are crucial conditions for a worker’s well-being. Workplace norms expect workers to prioritize paid work over life. Without a change to these norms, flexible work arrangements, which can erode the boundaries of work/nonwork times and places, can lead to chronic time strains as job pressures bear down on workers.
Unemployment alongside job insecurity is a problem for the mental health of adults in families. In different-gender couples, the way unemployment affects families’ mental health differs by gender, with many women feeling guilty about not providing health insurance, for example. And though unemployed men and women both feel the pressure to devote considerable time in searching for a job, which Rao called “the ideal job seeker norm,” more resources are devoted to men’s searches than women’s.
Other people at work. Supervisors and managers matter. In the book Overload: How Good Jobs Went Bad and What We Can Do about It (Princeton University Press 2020), authors Erin L. Kelly and Phyllis Moen show how an experimental design highlighted what matters for overcoming burnout and stress at work. A work redesign experiment, including a control group, illuminated how managers have a critical role in supporting employees through better ways of evaluation and by providing control to workers. Beyond managers and supervisors, other coworkers matter too.
Interpersonal conflict in the workplace increases work-to-family stressors, while supportive workplace relationships are related to less stress. For example, a study using longitudinal data finds that mothers feel more stressed in combining parenting with paid work when their children are infants or toddlers than when their children are in fifth grade, in part because they perceive less support from their supervisors when children are younger. Having adequate numbers of other staff to support one’s work is important. Finally, racialized workplaces and coworkers’ racism can be especially pernicious for the mental health of those from racialized communities who frequently have to endure microaggressions and discriminatory treatment from people at work.
The work itself and mental well-being. Job conditions contribute to expanding health disparities. Physically dangerous or noxious jobs and mentally or interpersonally unpleasant tasks can result in increases in illness, injuries, and psychological distress. Workers with lower levels of education are more likely to be exposed to these difficult work conditions. Workers with higher levels of education are more likely to have “good jobs”—that is, more autonomous, creative, and interesting jobs. But creative work can also have negative effects on health through heavy workload and multitasking.
The BBC Dad video is notable upon close reflection for revealing the hidden work of mothers or the primary caregivers of family members. But it also underscores how the conflicts of the most elite receive more cultural and research attention. Work-life demands are most difficult to navigate for the most marginalized. Putting the most disadvantaged workers at the center of sociological research can help to illuminate and implement needed solutions more quickly. The work of paid care workers can be especially taxing as it intersects with family life. For example, many domestic workers migrate to provide economically for family members, which precludes them from being physically with their own children while having to care for others. Controlled by the legal aspects of their sending and receiving countries, by other entities like NGOs, and by the whims of their employers, domestic workers may experience a range of work conditions from reasonable to horrific. Their mental health is affected by the labor itself, and being cut off from being with and caring for their children back home creates guilt, sadness, and loss, especially given traditional gendered norms and expectations of motherhood.
The pandemic revealed—but as of yet has not led to great changes to—the difficult working conditions of essential workers. Paid care workers, health care workers, and other service workers suffer low pay, irregular hours, and difficult work conditions. When workers are burnt out, the stress can spill over into workers’ home lives. This class of workers serves the greater good at the cost of their own well-being. They can be aided with better pay, better schedules, more autonomy in their work and their schedules, and by hiring of more staff to spread the workload. Indeed, they can also benefit from reduced hours at the same pay, what is known as the four-day workweek. Structural changes like these not only benefit the workers’ “balance” and mental health, but benefit employees’ families.
The Long Reach of Paid Work
How paid work intersects with family life directly influences worker well-being and indirectly impinges on families. The book Work Matters: How Parents’ Jobs Shape Children’s Well-Being (Princeton University Press 2022) by Maureen Perry-Jenkins shows how low-income parents’ work experiences impact not only their own well-being, but also their young children’s mental health. Work stressors, as described above, can make it difficult for an employee to be present mentally and physically—and ultimately to optimally function in family life.
Some of the difficulties low-wage workers face are financial insecurity and the inability to obtain paid family and sick leaves, which leaves these workers unable to easily care for children. Especially for new parents, the inability to get proper rest and establish routines due to work intrusions creates real burden and stress that can carry over to interactions with children. In contrast, “family friendly” and supportive supervisors who enable certain kinds of work experiences, such as flexibility of leaving times and autonomy, translate into positive, high-quality interactions between workers and their children.
Toward Work-Family Justice and Better Mental Health
Paid work, while providing financial resources and creating purpose and meaning for many, is out of sync with the well-being of families because it creates unnecessary stressors in the lives of workers and their families. It’s also out of sync with an equitable society because work stressors disproportionately affect those with the least power. It is especially important to be mindful of this current issue given that recent shifts in work conditions, such as an increase in remote work, may be creating even more unequal mental health trajectories—for example for women versus men and lower-resourced versus wealthier families. Solutions to work’s pernicious side, especially in the U.S., seem elusive, and work stressors continue to spill over into family life. Working toward work-family justice means making paid work and its intersection with life outside of work better and making burdens of unpaid care work lighter and more equal. Key policies, practices, and structures—such as paid family leave, personal and sick days, a higher minimum wage, a four-day work week, control over schedules, and quality and affordable universal childcare—are shown to improve the mental health of workers and their families, but these have yet to be widely implemented.
Any opinions expressed in the articles in this publication are those of the authors and not the American Sociological Association.
