need a reading response. ( two pages, in 5 hours)

11/1/2017 Yuzu: Psychology of Gender: Fourth Edition

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FIGURE 12.5Examples of Role Scarcity and Role Enhancement with Respect to Employee and Family Roles. What is the evidence for the scarcity and expansion hypotheses? Are multiple roles healthful or harmful?

The preponderance of evidence shows that multiple roles are good for women’s and men’s health (Barnett, 2004). A number of studies have shown that the healthiest people, men or women, are the ones who possess all three roles: spouse, parent, and paid worker (McMunn, Bartley, & Kuh, 2006). The most distressed people possess none of these roles. A longitudinal study of Swedish adults supported the role expansion hypothesis by showing that the greater number of roles was associated with less physical illness, and an increase in roles over an eight-year period reduced the risk of health problems (Nordenmark, 2004).

It may not be the mere accumulation of roles but the particular combination of roles that is beneficial. One role may enhance the effects of another role; for example, the parent role may be adaptive only if we possess the worker role. The worker role is critical in the presence of children because financial needs are greater. The parent role also appears to be beneficial to health only if one possesses the spouse role, at least for women (Fokkema, 2002; Khlat et al., 2000). A wealth of evidence suggests that unmarried mothers have the worst psychological and physical health (Lahelma et al., 2002; Sachs-Ericsson & Ciarlo, 2000). Unmarried mothers may feel overwhelmed with raising children because they lack the emotional and financial support of a spouse.

Thus far, all fingers point to role enhancement. Is there any evidence for the role scarcity hypothesis? There is, in terms of exercise. Among employed persons, married men and women exercise less than those who are unmarried, and the effects are stronger for men than women (Nomaguchi & Bianchi, 2004). As shown in Figure 12.6, marriage reduces exercise more for men than women (a), as does the presence of children (b). Simply examining whether more or fewer roles are beneficial to women’s and men’s health does not tell us much about how combining roles influences health. Roles cannot be viewed as resources or sources of stress that are combined in an additive way because they interact with one another. For example, taking on the parent role may affect how one views and enacts the paid worker role. And, taking on the paid worker role may affect how one views and enacts the parent role. Roles are enacted in a mutually exclusive way but affect one another—a phenomenon known as role spillover. Next we examine the specific ways that employee and family roles affect one another.

FIGURE 12.6(a) Employed married men and women exercise less than their unmarried counterparts, but the effects are stronger for men. (b) The presence of children under age 5 is associated with less exercise for employed men and women, but the effects are stronger for men. Source: Adapted from Nomaguchi and Bianchi (2004).

Effects of the Paid Worker Role of Family Roles It is not clear whether the paid worker role conflicts with family roles more for women or men. A meta-analysis revealed that job stress detracts from family satisfaction for both women and men but that the relation is stronger for men (Ford, Heinen, & Langkamer, 2007). Is this because men face more job stress, or is this because men’s work is more likely to interfere with family life? By contrast, a study examined the extent to which the paid worker role created conflicts for family roles and the extent to which family roles created conflicts for the paid worker role and found that women scored higher than men on both (Innstrand et al., 2009). A study of dual- earner couples showed that men and women were equally likely to perceive that job demands interfered with their marital relationship, but women were more likely than men to perceive that their spouses’ job demands interfered with their relationship (Matthews et al., 2006). Although there was greater spillover from the paid

11/1/2017 Yuzu: Psychology of Gender: Fourth Edition

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worker role to the spouse role for men than women, the spillover had greater negative consequences to the marital relationship for women. It may be that it is more normative for men’s than women’s paid work to spill over into the family so it is more noteworthy when women’s work affects family life. From my own experiences, women are more likely to attend children’s school and