TECH INEQUITIES

TheCostsofThinkingAboutWorkandFamilyMentalLaborWorkFamilySpilloverandGenderInequalityAmongParentsinDual-EarnerFamilies.pdf

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The Costs of Thinking About Work and Family: Mental Labor,

Work–Family Spillover, and Gender Inequality Among Parents in Dual-Earner Families

Shira Offer 2

One of the aspects unaccounted for in previous assessments of employed parents ‘distribution of time

is the mental dimension of tasks and demands. This aspect, referred to as mental labor, is conceptual-

ized as the planning, organization, and management of everyday activities. Using the experience sam-

pling method, a unique form of time diary, and survey data from the 500 Family Study (N = 402 mothers with 16,451 signals and 291 fathers with 11,322 signals), this study examined the prevalence,

context, and emotional correlates of mental labor among parents in dual-earner families. Results show

that fathers reported thinking more frequently about job-related matters than mothers but these

concerns did not spill over into unpaid work. By contrast, mothers’ job-related thoughts tended to spill

over into unpaid work and free-time activities. When engaging in mental labor, mothers and fathers

were equally likely to think about family matters, but these thoughts were only detrimental to emo-

tional well-being in mothers. Among both mothers and fathers, paid work was relatively insulated from

thoughts about family matters. Overall, findings highlight mothers’ double burden and suggest that

mental labor may contribute to mothers’ emotional stress and gender inequality among dual-earner

families.

KEY WORDS: dual-earner families; experience sampling method; mental labor; time distribution; well- being; work-family interface.

INTRODUCTION

As job expectations and parenting standards have become more demanding, many parents today experience severe time squeezes and are constantly in need of attending to the demands of both family and work (Bianchi, Robinson, and Milkie 2006; Christensen and Schneider 2010; Gerson 2009; Jacobs and Gerson 2004). Studies suggest that these pressures have led parents to frequently engage in mental labor as part of their juggling act (Daly 2002; Darrah, Freeman, and English-Lueck 2007; Hessing 1994). Mental labor is conceptualized as the planning, organization, coordination, and management of everyday tasks and duties, and it reflects parents’ concerns about their ability to get through the day in an efficient and timely manner (Hessing 1994; Mederer 1993; Shaw 2001; Walzer 1996). It can be viewed as a

1 I thank Karen Cerulo and the three anonymous Sociological Forum reviewers for their invaluable com- ments on previous drafts of this article. The findings of this study were presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association in August 2014 in New York City.

2 Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, 52900 Israel; e-mail: [email protected].

Sociological Forum, Vol. 29, No. 4, December 2014

DOI: 10.1111/socf.12126

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“mental spreadsheet” that helps parents accomplish daily activities that require mental effort, such as preparing for meetings at work, arranging car pools for their children, planning birthday parties, scheduling doctor’s appointments, and meeting job deadlines.

Paradoxically, although parents engage in mental labor in their attempt to balance multiple responsibilities at home and work, mental labor can be a major source of burden. For example, in their ethnographic study of the organization of time among dual-earner families, Darrah and his associates (2007:93) noted that “These internal mental activities became something more to do, thus increas- ing their [parents’] sense of crowding in everyday life.” Yet despite its implica- tions for parents’ well-being, mental labor has received relatively limited empirical attention. Most of the literature on family and work has focused on the visible or physical dimension of tasks and demands (Nippert-Eng 1996). Follow- ing Shaw’s (2008) claim that the work of thinking typically goes unnoticed by outside observers, including researchers, this study seeks to fill this gap in the literature by examining how frequently employed parents engage in mental labor, what they think about, and how they feel when they do so. Special attention is dedicated to thoughts that involve domain crossing, namely mental spillover between work and family—for example, how often parents think about job- related matters in nonwork domains (e.g., when they engage in unpaid work or during free-time activities) and how often they think about their family when they engage in paid work.

The mental dimension of the work–family interface is examined in this article using data from the 500 Family Study on the work and family life of parents in dual-earner middle-class families. Indisputably, some parental concerns are univer- sal (Nelson 2011), but others are likely to depend on families’ specific socioeco- nomic conditions. For example, all parents want their children to be safe, but this is a greater concern for low-income families who more often live in unsafe neigh- borhoods (Furstenberg et al. 1999). Low-income parents also face a more precari- ous labor market and are thus more likely to be concerned about economic issues such as securing jobs and making ends meet (e.g., Edin and Lein 1997). Neverthe- less, even if these data are not representative of all families in the United States, the focus on middle-class parents covers a segment of the population that has experienced particularly severe time pressures and is therefore of much interest to scholars and policymakers (Christensen and Schneider 2010; Jacobs and Gerson 2004).

Participants in the 500 Family Study were surveyed and filled in the experience sampling method (ESM), a unique time diary method that provides high-quality information about respondents’ activities, thoughts, and emotional states as they occur in natural settings (Hektner, Schmidt, and Csikszentmihalyi 2007). A major advantage of the ESM is that it also provides information about what respondents think about when they engage in different types of activities. Therefore, the ESM is particularly suited for studying mental labor and makes it possible to estimate the extent of mental spillover between work and family and examine its emotional repercussions.

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THE CONCEPTUALIZATION OF MENTAL LABOR

In the qualitative literature, mental labor is viewed as another dimension of family work for which women bear the major responsibility. Family work is often mental in nature because it involves not merely the accomplishment of physical tasks, such as cleaning, cooking, and chauffeuring children, but also the planning, organization, and management of these tasks, as well as the thinking and feelings that accompany them (Daly 2002; DeVault 1991, 1999; Hessing 1994; Mederer 1993; Shaw 2001; Walzer 1996). Mental labor is generally considered part of women’s role as household managers. In most dual-earner families, mothers are the ones who assure that routine activities are maintained and daily needs are met. Mothers are also expected to be constantly on call and prepare backup plans for last-minute needs and unexpected events (Arendell 2001; Bianchi et al. 2006; Coltrane 1996, 2000; Doucet 2006; Hochschild 1989).

Recent scholarship, however, has underscored fathers’ increasing involvement at home (Bianchi et al. 2006; Cabrera et al. 2000; Sayer, Bianchi, and Robinson 2004). This trend is related, among other things, to the shift toward more egalitarian relationships and changing norms of fathering, which pressure fathers to take an active role in child rearing. As a result, a growing number of men include hands-on care and emotional connectivity, not just financial provision, in their definition of “good” fathering (Coltrane 1996; Doucet 2006; Pleck 2010). The wish to be more involved with their family is likely to increase fathers’ sense of stress and conflict, especially in light of current workplace cultures and policies that provide little support for fathers’ nurturance efforts and continue to portray the ideal worker as a man whose family responsibilities do not intrude into his work life (Gerson 2010; Ranson 2012; Williams 2012).

It is thus not surprising that gender inequality in the domestic sphere persists and that family care is still viewed as the major responsibility of women (Coltrane 2000; Doucet 2006; Townsend 2002). The qualitative literature suggests that moth- ers’ role as the household manager and primary, or “default,” parent (i.e., the par- ent who is the most accessible and attentive to the child’s needs) is also reflected at the mental level. Studies show that mothers more frequently worry about their chil- dren (Doucet 2006; Kurz 2002; Walzer 1996), advocate for their children’s needs (DeVault 1999), coordinate family members’ schedules (Arendell 2001; Coltrane 1996; Daly 2002; Hessing 1994), and organize family activities and events (Arendell 2001; Daly 1996; Shaw 2001, 2008).

Mothers’ concerns about family matters may also affect their engagement in other domains. It has been argued, for example, that mothers’ job effort and pro- ductivity may be impaired because they spend more time worrying for their children and taking care of family and household needs while at work (Anderson, Binder, and Krause 2002–2003; Budig and England 2001). A similar argument has been raised as regard free-time activities. Studies have shown that mothers’ experience of free time was more often fragmented and “contaminated” by activities that revolve around the care and concern of children, making leisure activities less enjoyable for mothers than for fathers (Arendell 2001; Bittman and Wajcman 2000; Mattingly and Bianchi 2003).

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Overall, these trends suggest that because concerns about family matters require the expenditure of considerable time and energy they often take a heavy toll on parents’, especially mothers’, emotional well-being. Yet this type of mental labor remains highly invisible and is usually taken for granted, even to those involved (Darrah et al. 2007; Hessing 1994). For this reason, mental labor plays an impor- tant role in the reproduction of gender inequality among dual-earner families (Hochschild 1989; Mederer 1993; Shaw 2008; Walzer 1996).

Most qualitative research has focused on mental labor in the family domain, but employed parents may also be preoccupied with issues pertaining to their job. Current workplace cultures require workers, particularly those in high-status occu- pations, to be available around the clock to deal with job issues (Blair-Loy 2003; Milliken and Dunn-Jensen 2005; Schieman, Milkie, and Glavin 2009). These expec- tations have been facilitated by the development of communication technologies, which allow people to work “anytime and anywhere” (Chesley, 2005; Olson-Bucha- nan and Boswell 2006). Consistent with these trends, studies show that workers fre- quently think about their job outside of the workplace and that this type of preoccupation can impinge upon their family life and the performance of family roles (Ashforth, Kreiner, and Fugate 2000; Bakker and Demerouti 2007; Nippert- Eng 1996; Voydanoff 2004).

Research further suggests that these types of concerns, which revolve around job-related issues, may be especially acute among men because men are still com- pelled to be the main breadwinner of their family. In contemporary culture, paid work is central to men’s masculine identity, sense of self-worth, and social status. Therefore, despite increasing participation at home, being a provider continues to dominate men’s understandings of what it means to be a “good” father and a “suc- cessful” man (Christiansen and Palkovitz 2001; Townsend 2002; Williams 2012) and most men still prioritize paid work over family care (Gerson 2010; Ranson 2012).

In this study I adopt a broad conceptualization of mental labor, which includes general concerns about tasks to be done and time constraints that arise at both home and work, referred to as cross-domain mental labor, as well as domain- specific thoughts, namely thoughts about family matters (i.e., family-specific men- tal labor) and thoughts about job-related matters (i.e., job-specific mental labor). I then examine the context of these three types of mental labor and the extent to which they spill over into the domains of paid work, unpaid work, and free-time activities.

THE MENTAL DIMENSION OF WORK–FAMILY SPILLOVER

Research on work–family spillover has examined the ways in which overflows between the domains of work and family manifest themselves, including how feel- ings, attitudes, and behaviors that develop in one domain are carried over into the other domain (Bellavia and Frone 2005; Greenhaus and Beutell 1985; Keene and Reynolds 2005; Roehling, Moen, and Batt 2003; Stevens et al. 2007; Voydanoff 2004). Most attention in this field has been dedicated to the experience of negative

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spillovers, which result from the existence of multiple demands that compete for individuals’ finite resources, including time, energy, and attention, and make it diffi- cult for them to fulfill the requirements of both domains (e.g., Bakker and Geurts 2004; Greenhaus and Beutell 1985; Grzywacz, Almeida, and McDonald 2002; Mennino and Brayfield 2005).

The literature further acknowledges the directionality of the interference by distinguishing between work-to-family and family-to-work spillover (Byron 2005; Grzywacz et al. 2002; Jacobs and Gerson 2004; Roehling et al. 2003; Voydanoff 2004). Studies show that negative work-to-family spillover (e.g., when people find it difficult to do things at home because their job makes them feel too tired) are more prevalent than family-to-work spillover (e.g., when family matters keeps people from spending adequate time on their job), thus testifying to the greater importance attached to paid work over family (Jacobs and Gerson 2004; Mennino and Bray- field 2005; Roehling et al. 2003). These findings resonate with Nippert-Eng’s (1996) observation regarding cross-realm talk. Nippert-Eng notes that talking about work issues at home is more common than talking about home and personal matters at work because, among other things, workplace cultures expect employers to dedicate their full attention and energy to work while they are at the workplace. No equiva- lent norms exist for the home.

In this study I focus on the mental dimension of the work–family interface by examining the extent to which thoughts associated with one domain intrude into other domains. This is a relatively neglected issue in the quantitative literature on work and family. Most measures of work–family spillover used in survey-based studies ask how “family life,” “family demands,” or “personal life” in general affects the individual’s paid work or vice versa. Certain indices do probe mental spillover. Respondents in the Work, Stress, and Health survey, for example, were asked how often they think about things going on at work when they are not working (Schi- eman et al. 2009). In the National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States, respondents were asked how often personal or family worries and problems distract them when they are at work (Grzywacz and Marks 2000). These items, however, were not treated separately but rather were averaged with the other items in the scale to create a global work–family spillover score. Hence the present study expands over previous research by specifically focusing on mental work–family spillover.

A focus on mental spillover is important also because it is indicative of the degree of permeability or integration between roles. According to border/bound- ary theory, the extent to which elements from one domain enter the other domain determines the permeability of the boundaries of the domains (Ashforth et al. 2000; Bellavia and Frone 2005; Clark 2000; Nippert-Eng 1996). A high degree of permeability, it is argued, facilitates integration between roles and between the different aspects of the self and makes the physical and mental

3 By focusing on the detrimental aspects of the work–family interface, the concept of negative spillover is analogous to the concept of work–family conflict or interference (Roehling et al. 2003; Stevens et al. 2007). As a form of interrole conflict (Greenhaus and Beutell 1985), both concepts examine the transfer of emotions and behaviors from home to work and from work to home (Roehling et al. 2003).

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transitions between home and work easier. 4 In contemporary society both work

and family have “boundary-spanning demands” that require parents to perform work-related activities at home or address family-related issues at work and can lead to role-blurring (Voydanoff 2004, 2005). Mental labor can be an important source of role-blurring because it allows people to be “physically located in the role’s domain but psychologically and/or behaviorally involved in another role” (Ashforth et al. 2000:474). A major goal of the present study is to examine how frequently these mental intrusions occur and how respondents feel when they occur.

WORK–FAMILY SPILLOVER AND WELL-BEING

Research has shown that work-to-family and family-to-work spillovers were both associated with outcomes such as increased stress, depression, and psychologi- cal distress (see reviews in Allen et al. 2000; Bellavia and Frone 2005). Additionally, studies have found that work demands leading to role-blurring, such as bringing work home or receiving phone calls from work at home, were detrimental to well- being (Ashforth et al. 2000; Glavin et al. 2011; Voydanoff 2005). These findings raise the question of whether the experience of mental work–family spillover is simi- larly detrimental to employed parents’ well-being. While qualitative studies have documented the feelings of stress and emotional burden that often accompany engagement in mental labor among employed parents, particularly mothers (Hes- sing 1994; Hochschild 1989; Walzer 1996), this important issue has been relatively overlooked in quantitative research.

Prior studies, however, suggest that mental work–family spillover may have negative implications for well-being. Mental spillover requires a quick transition from a family to a work mind-set or vice versa. These transitions, it is argued, can make it difficult to concentrate on tasks (Ashforth et al. 2000; Glavin et al. 2011; Nippert-Eng 1996), create strain-based or time-based conflict (Ashforth et al. 2000; Greenhaus and Beutell 1985; Olson-Buchanan and Boswell 2006), and induce a neg- ative self-appraisal that may make people feel that they fail meeting prescribed role expectations (Voydanoff 2005).

GENDER CONTINGENCIES AND STUDY HYPOTHESES

The experience of mental spillover, as well as its emotional repercussions, may differ by gender. Despite ideological changes favoring egalitarianism, the salience and meaning of family and work roles continue to be shaped along gender lines. As Doucet (2006:191) noted, “men’s and women’s lives as caregivers and earners are

4 While both spillover theory and border, or more generally boundary, theory deal with how the domains of work and family influence each other, they relate to distinct concepts (see reviews in Bellavia and Frone 2005; Glavin, Schieman, and Reid 2011; Voydanoff 2005). Research on negative spillover, as a form of interrole conflict, focuses on how demands from multiple domains are incompatible such that participation in one role makes it difficult to participate in the other role. By contrast, border/boundary theory emphasizes the extent to which different role domains overlap, such as when individuals receive phone calls from work when they are at home.

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affected by deeply felt moral and social scripts about what they should do within and outside household life.” Reflecting the view that women should be responsible for unpaid domestic work, research has shown that women experience greater nega- tive family-to-work spillover than men (Byron 2005; Chesley 2005; Dilworth 2004; Keene and Reynolds 2005; Martinengo, Jacob, and Hill 2010). These findings also suggest that it may be more socially acceptable for family matters to intrude into mothers’ than into fathers’ paid work and other activities (Butler and Skattebo, 2004; Korabik, McElwain, and Chappell 2008).

By contrast, the continued centrality of breadwinning for men’s paternal identity (Christiansen and Palkovitz 2001; Townsend 2002) may lead fathers to think more frequently than mothers about work-related matters in unpaid work contexts and consider the intrusion of job demands into the family domain as legitimate. Glavin et al. (2011), for example, showed that men were more often contacted by coworkers, supervisors, managers, or clients about work matters outside normal work hours. Simon (1995) argued that because the roles of work and home are more likely to be interrelated among men, working for pay does not contradict prescribed role expectations, as is often the case among women (see also Garey 1999). Much to the contrary, financial provision is often regarded as fulfilling men’s family obligations. I therefore expect that mothers will more frequently engage in cross-domain and family-specific mental labor (Hypothesis 1) whereas fathers will more frequently engage in job-specific mental labor (Hypothesis 2). I also hypothesize that cross-domain and family-specific mental labor will more frequently spill over into mothers’ than fathers’ paid work and free-time activities (Hypothesis 3) whereas job-specific mental labor will more fre- quently spill over into fathers’ than mothers’ unpaid work and free-time activities (Hypothesis 4).

Furthermore, women are the ones typically held accountable for how their children fare and how their households are run (Arendell 2001; Doucet 2006; Walzer 1996), suggesting that mental labor may be a more stressful and negative experience for mothers than for fathers. Mothers are also more likely than fathers to be criticized for being involved too much in paid work (Deutsch and Saxon 1998), which when compounded by the expectation that mothers should be fully devoted to their job makes the juggling act especially challenging for mothers (Blair-Loy 2003). Glavin and colleagues (2011) showed that having to deal with job-related matters outside of normal work hours was related to a higher level of guilt among mothers only. Furthermore, they found that guilt par- tially mediated the association between work contact and psychological distress only among mothers. These findings resonate with Simon’s (1995) study showing that employed mothers had more guilt feelings and experienced greater role con- flict because they were more likely to feel that their employment prevented them from fulfilling their family obligations. Hence I expect that the intrusion of thoughts about family matters into paid work and free-time activities (Hypothesis 5), and the intrusion of thoughts about job matters into paid work and free-time activities (Hypothesis 6), will be negatively associated with emotional well-being but that these associations will be more pronounced among mothers than fathers.

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DATA AND METHODS

The Sample

The data for this study come from the 500 Family Study, a large interdisciplin- ary multimethod research project that explored the work and family experiences of parents in middle-class dual-earner families.

5 Respondents were recruited through

posts at local schools and newspapers in eight urban and suburban communities across the United States in 1999–2000. The study included predominantly non- Hispanic white families with highly educated parents whose average earnings were above the national average for married parents in the United States (for more infor- mation about the 500 Family Study, its design, and sample characteristics, see Schneider and Waite 2005).

Participants in the 500 Family Study completed a survey and filled in the experience sampling method (ESM), a unique form of time diary that collects infor- mation about the content and context of individuals’ daily experiences in the course of a typical week (Csikszentmihalyi and Larson 1987). In this study respondents carried a paging device that was preprogrammed to randomly emit eight signals during their waking hours for 7 consecutive days. When signaled, they were asked to report and evaluate their activities, thoughts, and affective states on a self-report questionnaire. The ESM is considered a highly valid and reliable instrument that provides accurate information about individuals’ time uses and subjective experi- ences as they occur in their natural setting (Hektner et al. 2007). The ESM response rate in the 500 Family Study was 78% and 73% for mothers and fathers, respectively.

The analyses conducted in this study are based on a subsample of parents who provided both survey and ESM data (402 mothers with 16,451 signals and 291 fathers with 11,322 signals). Consistent with previous studies that used the ESM (Schneider 2006), participants who responded to less than a fourth of the sig- nals (15 mothers and 11 fathers) were excluded from the sample. A multiple impu- tation technique (MI) with AMELIA II software (Honaker, King, and Blackwell 2009) was used to impute for missing data in the ESM emotional outcomes and survey measures.

6 Imputing missing data did not yield significantly different

results.

Measures

Mental Labor. In the ESM, respondents were asked the open-ended question “What was on your mind?” when signaled. I used responses to this question to

5 This research project was directed by Barbara Schneider and Linda Waite and funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Center on Parents, Children, and Work at the University of Chicago. The 500 Family Study data are available through the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) and can be downloaded at http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/ICPSR/studies/4549 or http://dx.doi.org/ 10.3886/ICPSR04549. I

6 In this study, 695 signals could not be imputed because the respondent did not answer any of the emo- tional well-being items. The advantage of the ESM, however, is that if respondents have a sufficient number of signals overall, they can fail to respond to one or several signals without being excluded from the analyses.

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construct three measures of mental labor: (1) Cross-domain mental labor (CD-ML) refers to general concerns about daily tasks and one’s ability to accomplish them in a timely manner and it includes items such as thinking about things to do, being late, and the day’s or next day’s schedule; (2) Family-specific mental labor (F-ML) includes thoughts about family, children, and spouse; (3) Job-specific mental labor (J-ML) includes thoughts about work, clients, and supervisor. All three measures of mental labor are dummy variables indicating whether the respondent engaged in this type of mental labor when signaled (yes = 1; no = 0). Responses such as thinking about food, life, God, society, and sex, which accounted for 22% of all signals in which thoughts were reported, were excluded from this measure because they did not fit the conceptualization of mental labor.

Main Activity. To examine the context of mental labor and assess the extent of mental spillover the three mental labor measures were considered by the type of activity parents were engaged in when they reported mental labor. In the ESM participants were asked to report what they were doing when signaled. Responses to this item were originally coded by trained coders into more than 400 activity codes (all the items were double coded, with interrater reliabilities ranging from j = .79–.95). I grouped these codes into the three following cate- gories: (1) paid work refers to employment-related activities conducted at work, home, and other settings, including commuting to and from work; (2) unpaid work includes family care and domestic activities, such as household chores, child care, and shopping; and (3) free time refers to personal care and discre- tionary activities, including eating, recreation, leisure, and participation in reli- gious and social events. As shown in Table I, mothers reported spending significantly less time in paid work and more time in unpaid work and free-time activities than fathers.

Emotional Well-Being. In the ESM, respondents were asked to report on their feel- ings when signaled. I used these items to construct two composite emotional well- being measures that were used as dependent variables in the multilevel analyses. These include the means of positive affect—feeling cheerful, happy, relaxed, good about oneself, and succeeding in the activity when signaled (a =.85)—and negative affect—feeling nervous, strained, worried, and stressed (a = .88). The response cate- gories for all the ESM items ranged from 0 (not at all) to 3 (very much). As Table I indicates, mothers and fathers in this study reported similar levels of positive and negative affect.

Control Variable. The multilevel models controlled for several familial, demo- graphic, and occupational characteristics that have been shown in previous research to be associated with work–family spillover (e.g., Bellavia and Frone 2005; Byron 2005; Dilworth 2004; Grzywacz et al. 2002; Keene and Reynolds 2005; Martinengo et al. 2010; Stevens et al. 2007). Number of children is a dummy variable indicating whether the respondent has one or two children (three or more children is the reference category). Age of youngest child includes two dummies: whether the respondent’s youngest child is below age 2 or between the ages of 2

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and 6 (youngest child above age 6 is the reference category). Age is measured in years. Graduate degree refers to whether the respondent has a graduate or profes- sional degree (yes = 1; no = 0). The variable work hours was originally measured with seven categories referring to the number of hours the respondent spends working in a typical week (“1–15,” “16–25,” “26–37,” “38–45,” “46–50,” “51–60,” and “more than 60”). This question was recoded into two dummy variables: whether the respondent works 38–50, or 51 or more hours per week (37 or fewer hours per week is the reference category). Regular work schedule refers to whether the respondent works on a regular daytime (anytime 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.) schedule (yes = 1; no = 0). Job autonomy is the mean of three items asking respondents, on a scale ranging from 1 (“not true at all”) to 4 (“very true”), whether they have a lot of opportunities at work to make decisions on their own, and say over what happens at their job, and whether they can design or plan most of their daily work (a = .88). Job stress is assessed with a single item asking, on a scale ranging from 0 (“never”) to 4 (“always”), how often the respondent finds his or her work stressful. As Table I shows, more than half of the parents in this study had one to two children, about 6% of them had a child under the age of 2, and parents’ aver- age age was approximately 45. More than 80% of mothers and nearly 90% of fathers had a graduate or professional degree. A significantly higher percentage of fathers reported working 38–50 hours per week (61%, compared to 48% among mothers) and 51 or more hours per week (26%, compared to 6% among mothers). The percentage of respondents who reported a regular daytime schedule was also significantly higher among fathers than mothers (83% and 70%,

Table I. Means and standard deviations for emotional well-being, main activity, and control variables by gender

Mothers Fathers

Emotional well-being (ESM) a

Positive affect 1.92 (.35) 1.92 (.32) Negative affect .42 (.30) .40 (.31)

Primary activity (ESM) a

Paid work .33 (.16) .45*** (.15) Unpaid work .28 (.13) .18*** (.10) Free time .39 (.12) .37 (.13)

Controls (survey) One or two children .61 (.49) .55 (.03) Youngest child is under 2 years .06 (.24) .07 (.25) Youngest child is 2–6 years .23 (.42) .22 (.42) Age 44.96 (6.21) 45.85 (6.42) Graduate degree .81 (.39) .90* (.31) Work hours (38–50) .48 (.50) .61*** (.49) Work hours (51+) .06 (.25) .26*** (.44) Regular work schedule .70 (.46) .83*** (.38) Job autonomy (0–4) 3.18 (.85) 3.26 (.80) Job stress (1–4) 2.08 (.77) 2.15 (.77)

Note: N = 402 mothers with 16,451 signals; 291 fathers with 11,322 signals. a The estimate is calculated at the aggregated person-level. *p < .05; ** p < .01; *** p < .001 (two-tailed tests).

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respectively). No significant gender differences were found for job autonomy or job stress.

Analytic Strategy

The first part of the study provides descriptive information about the preva- lence and content of mental labor and extent of mental spillover by type of activity. The second part of the study takes advantage of the nested structure of the data and employs hierarchical linear modeling to estimate the association between mental labor and the two ESM emotional well-being outcomes (i.e., positive affect and neg- ative affect), while controlling for familial, demographic, and occupational charac- teristics. The aggregated measure of time spent in unpaid work is also used as a control variable in these models. The major advantage of hierarchical linear model- ing is that it accounts for the nonindependence of observations within individuals and allows estimating the signal (within-individual) level and the person (between- individual) level simultaneously (Raudenbush and Bryk 2002). The hierarchical lin- ear models can be expressed with two sets of equations. The within-individual level equation models emotional well-being as a function of the three mental labor mea- sures:

Positive affectij ¼ b0j þ b1j(CD-ML)ij þ b2j(F-ML)ij þ b3j(J-ML)ij þ eij ð1Þ

The dependent variable is the score on emotional outcome (positive affect in this illustration) on signal i for person j. This equation estimates positive affect as a linear function of mental labor, where b0j is the intercept, b1j, b2j, and b3j respectively denote the association between cross-domain, family-specific, and job-specific mental labor on positive affect, and eij is the within-person residual. In this equation the intercept is allowed to vary randomly across individuals. This variation is then explained using the between-individual equation, which estimates variation across respondents in b0j as a function of covariates Z:

b0j ¼ c00 þ c01Z1j þ c02Z2j þ . . . þ c0kZkj þ m0j ð2Þ

In this equation c00 is the average score on positive affect, c01 to c0k are the regres- sion coefficients of the estimated effects of the covariates Z (i.e., familial, demo- graphic, and occupational controls) on the adjusted positive affect score, and m0j is the person-level error term assumed to be normally distributed with mean zero and unknown variance.

In the next stage, to test whether the association between emotional well-being and mental labor varies by context, or type of activity (i.e., paid work, unpaid work, and free time), interaction terms between the mental labor and activity measures were added to the model. Free time is used as the omitted category. These models made it possible to examine how parents feel when they experience mental spillovers.

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RESULTS

The Prevalence, Content, and Context of Mental Labor

The descriptive results presented in Table II indicate that overall mothers were more likely than fathers to engage in mental labor. Mothers reported engaging in mental labor in 26.14% of the signals, the equivalent of slightly more than one- fourth of their waking time, whereas fathers reported doing so in about one-fifth of their waking time (21.46% of signals). An examination by type of mental labor showed that compared to fathers, mothers were more likely to engage in cross- domain and family-specific mental labor and less likely to engage in job-specific mental labor. It should be noted, however, that although significant, these differ- ences were small in size (3% or lower).

Table II further shows the within-mental labor distribution of signals. These results indicate that the share of cross-domain mental labor out of all mental labor signals was slightly higher among mothers than fathers (53.8% and 48.5%, respec- tively). The share of family-specific mental labor signals out of all mental labor sig- nals, however, was similar for mothers and fathers. Stated differently, when engaging in mental labor both mothers and fathers spent about 30% of their time thinking about family matters. This result, together with the finding that the gender difference in time spent in family-specific mental labor throughout the day was extremely small (less than 3%) fails to support Hypothesis 1. By contrast, fathers spent a significantly larger proportion of their mental labor time thinking about job-related matters (23.1% as compared to 14.6% among mothers). These findings lend some support to Hypothesis 2.

Next, to examine whether mental labor varies by context and estimate the extent of mental spillover between domains, I cross-tabulated the three mental labor measures by the type of activity. As Table III shows, mothers engaged in family- specific mental labor while doing unpaid work slightly more often than fathers (13.7% of all mental labor signals among mothers compared to 9.3% among

Table II. Gender differences in the distribution of mental labor signals: percentages

Mothers Fathers

Mental labor (out of all signals) 26.14 (12.64) 21.46 (12.79)*** Type of mental labor (out of all signals) Cross-domain mental labor 13.77 (9.19) 10.24*** (8.07) Family-specific mental labor 8.36 (7.07) 5.92*** (5.89) Job-specific mental labor 4.00 (5.26) 5.29** (7.07)

Total 26.13 21.45 Type of mental labor (out of all mental labor signals) Cross-domain mental labor 53.8 48.5** Family-specific mental labor 31.6 28.4 Job-specific mental labor 14.6 23.1***

Total 100 100

Note: N = 402 mothers with 16,451 signals; 291 fathers with 11,322 signals. All the estimates are calcu- lated at the aggregated person-level. *p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001 (two-tailed tests).

Costs of Thinking About Work and Family 927

fathers), but mothers and fathers were equally likely to engage in family-specific mental labor while doing paid work (5.7%) and during free-time activities (about 13%). Furthermore, no gender differences were found for cross-domain mental labor in the three contexts. Hypothesis 3, which posited that cross-domain and fam- ily-specific mental labor would spill over more frequently into mothers’ than into fathers’ paid work and free time was thus not supported.

The results did not support Hypothesis 4 either. Table III indicates that moth- ers engaged more frequently in job-specific mental labor while doing unpaid work than fathers (16.1% and 9.4% among mothers and fathers, respectively) and during free-time activities (18.1% and 15.6% among mothers and fathers, respectively). These results suggest that mothers rather than fathers, as expected in Hypothesis 4, experience more mental work-to-family spillover.

Mental Work–Family Spillover and Emotional Well-Being

Table IV presents the results of the hierarchical linear models predicting the two ESM emotional well-being outcomes. As Models 1 and 5, respectively, show cross-domain mental labor (CD-ML) was associated with lower positive affect among both mothers (b = –0.04, p < .01) and fathers (b = –0.04, p < .01). This associ- ation did not vary by context for mothers as none of the coefficients of CD-ML in the model with interaction effects (Model 2) was significant. For fathers, however, Model 6 suggests that this association was derived from paid work (b = 0.03 – 0.11 = –.08, p < .001). Stated differently, fathers reported lower positive affect when they engaged in cross-domain mental labor in the context of paid work only. Thinking about tasks to be done and time constraints during paid work appeared to be a negative experience for both mothers and fathers. As Models 4 and 8 indicate both mothers and fathers reported higher negative affect when they engaged in

Table III. Gender differences in the distribution of mental labor signals by type of mental labor and main activity: percentages (out of all mental labor signals)

Mothers Fathers

Cross-domain mental labor Paid work 10.0 16.6 Unpaid work 2.2 1.9 Free-time activities 3.1 5.8

Family-specific mental labor Paid work 5.7 5.7 Unpaid work 13.7 9.3*** Free-time activities 13.4 13.1

Job-specific mental labor Paid work 17.8 22.7*** Unpaid work 16.1 9.4*** Free-time activities 18.1 15.6***

Total 100 100

Note: N = 402 mothers with 16,451 signals; 291 fathers with 11,322 signals. *p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001 (two-tailed tests).

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T a b le

IV .

H ie ra rc h ic a l li n ea r m o d el in g re su lt s p re d ic ti n g p a re n ts ’ em

o ti o n a l w el l- b ei n g w it h m en ta l la b o r, m a in

a ct iv it y , a n d co n tr o ls

M o th er s

F a th er s

P o si ti v e a ff ec t

N eg a ti v e a ff ec t

P o si ti v e a ff ec t

N eg a ti v e a ff ec t

M o d el 1

M o d el 2

M o d el 3

M o d el 4

M o d el 5

M o d el 6

M o d el 7

M o d el 8

b ( S E )

S ig n a l- le v el v a ri a b le s

C D -M

L – .0 4 * * (. 0 1 )

– .0 4 (. 0 2 )

.0 4 * * (. 0 1 )

.0 0 (. 0 2 )

– .0 4 * * (. 0 1 )

.0 3 (. 0 3 )

.0 2 (. 0 1 )

– .0 1 (. 0 2 )

F -M

L – .0 4 * (. 0 2 )

– .0 3 (. 0 2 )

.0 5 * * * (. 0 2 )

.0 4 (. 0 2 )

.0 1 (. 0 2 )

– .0 1 (. 0 3 )

– .0 3 (. 0 2 )

– .0 5 (. 0 3 )

J- M L

– .0 4 (. 0 2 )

– .0 1 (. 0 5 )

.0 2 (. 0 2 )

.0 2 (. 0 4 )

– .0 2 (. 0 2 )

.0 3 (. 0 4 )

.0 3 (. 0 2 )

– .0 7 (. 0 5 )

C D -M

L 9

p a id

w o rk

– .0 2 (. 0 3 )

.0 7 * (. 0 3 )

– .1 1 * * * (. 0 3 )

.0 7 * * (. 0 3 )

C D -M

L 9

u n p a id

w o rk

.0 1 (. 0 3 )

.0 4 (. 0 3 )

– .0 4 (. 0 4 )

– .0 1 (. 0 3 )

F -M

L 9

p a id

w o rk

– .0 2 (. 0 5 )

.0 6 (. 0 4 )

– .0 1 (. 0 6 )

.1 0 (. 0 6 )

F -M

L 9

u n p a id

w o rk

.0 0 (. 0 3 )

.0 2 (. 0 3 )

.0 5 (. 0 5 )

.0 0 (. 0 4 )

J- M L 9

p a id

w o rk

– .0 3 (. 0 5 )

.0 3 (. 0 5 )

– .0 6 (. 0 5 )

.1 3 * * (. 0 5 )

J- M L 9

u n p a id

w o rk

.0 1 (. 0 6 )

– .0 8 (. 0 6 )

– .0 9 (. 0 7 )

.1 0 (. 0 9 )

In te rc ep t

1 .8 9 * * * (. 0 6 )

.5 5 * * * (. 0 5 )

2 .0 4 * * * (. 0 8 )

.2 9 * * * (. 0 7 )

P er so n -l ev el v a ri a b le s

E ff ec ts o n in te rc ep t

O n e– tw

o ch il d re n

.0 1 (. 0 3 )

.0 1 (. 0 4 )

– .0 1 2 (. 0 3 5 )

– .0 5 (. 0 3 )

Y o u n g es t ch il d < 2

.0 4 (. 0 6 )

– .1 3 * (. 0 5 )

– .1 3 (. 0 8 )

.0 4 (. 0 8 )

Y o u n g es t ch il d 2 – 6

.0 8 (. 0 5 )

– .0 8 * (. 0 4 )

– .0 7 (. 0 5 )

.0 2 (. 0 4 )

.0 3 (. 0 4 )

A g e

.0 0 (. 0 0 )

– .0 0 (. 0 0 )

– .0 1 (. 0 0 )

– .0 0 (. 0 0 )

G ra d u a te

d eg re e

– .0 1 (. 0 5 )

– .0 7 (. 0 4 )

-0 6 (. 0 6 )

– .0 6 (. 0 6 )

.1 2 * * (. 0 5 )

T im

e in

u n p a id

w o rk

– .1 0 (. 1 4 )

– .1 1 (. 1 4 )

– .1 6 (. 1 2 )

.1 6 (. 1 8 )

.1 5 (. 1 8 )

– .5 6 * * * (. 1 7 )

– .5 5 * * (. 1 7 )

W o rk

h o u rs

(3 8 – 5 0 )

– .0 1 (. 0 4 )

– .0 1 (. 0 3 )

– .0 4 (. 0 6 )

– .0 1 (. 0 5 )

W o rk

h o u rs

(5 1 + )

– .0 2 (. 0 8 )

– .0 4 (. 0 5 )

– .0 5 (. 0 5 )

– .0 1 (. 0 7 )

– .0 3 (. 0 6 )

R eg u la r w o rk

sc h ed u le

.0 4 (. 0 4 )

– .0 7 * (. 0 3 )

– .0 1 (. 0 5 )

.0 3 (. 0 4 )

Jo b a u to n o m y

.0 5 * (. 0 2 )

– .0 0 (. 0 2 )

.0 6 * * (. 0 2 )

– .0 0 (. 0 2 )

Jo b st re ss

– .1 4 * * * (. 0 2 )

.1 2 * * * (. 0 2 )

– .0 9 * * * (. 0 2 )

.1 4 * * * (. 0 3 )

.1 5 * * * (. 0 3 )

V a ri a n ce

co m p o n en ts

S ig n a l- le v el (l ev el 1 )

.3 0

.2 4

.2 6

.2 1

P er so n -l ev el (l ev el 2 )

.1 0

.0 7

.0 9

.0 7

N o te : C D -M

L = cr o ss -d o m a in

m en ta l la b o r, F -M

L = fa m il y -s p ec ifi c m en ta l la b o r, J- M L = jo b -s p ec ifi c m en ta l la b o r. N

= 4 0 2 m o th er s w it h 1 6 ,4 5 1 si g n a ls ; 2 9 1 fa th er s w it h

1 1 ,3 2 2 si g n a ls .

* p < .0 5 ; * * p < .0 1 ; * * * p < .0 0 1 (t w o -t a il ed

te st s) .

Costs of Thinking About Work and Family 929

cross-domain mental labor during paid work (b = 0.00 + 0.07 = 0.07, p < .05 among mothers; and b = –0.01 + 0.07 = 0.06, p < .01 among fathers). By contrast, cross- domain mental labor during unpaid work or free-time activities was not signifi- cantly associated with either positive affect or negative affect.

Hypothesis 5 posited that engaging in family-specific mental labor during paid work or free-time activities would be negatively associated with emotional well- being and that these associations would be more pronounced among mothers than fathers. The results presented in Table IV provide partial support to this hypothe- sis. Family-specific mental labor (F-ML) was overall a negative experience for mothers, regardless of context. It was associated with lower positive affect in Model 1 (b = –0.04, p < .05) and higher negative affect in Model 3 (b = 0.05, p < .001). Mod- els 2 and 4, however, indicate that these associations did not depend on the type of activity because none of the interaction terms was significant. By contrast, family- specific mental labor was not significantly related to either positive affect or negative affect in fathers (see Models 6 and 8).

According to Hypothesis 6, the spillover of job-related thoughts into unpaid work and free-time activities was expected to be detrimental to emotional well- being. The results, however, indicate that no significant associations were found between job-specific mental labor (J-ML) in the contexts of unpaid work or free time and the two emotional well-being outcomes in either mothers or fathers. Thinking about job-related matters during paid work was associated with higher negative affect in fathers only (b = –0.07 + 0.13 = 0.06, p < .01 in Model 8).

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

Previous research has shown that although men and women in dual-earner families have relatively similar workloads, that is, they spend approximately the same amount of time on paid and unpaid labor combined (Bianchi et al. 2006; Bittman and Wajcman 2000), employed mothers experience substantially greater burden and emotional stress than employed fathers (Arendell 2001; Hochschild 1989; Mattingly and Sayer 2006). In their attempt to explain this contradiction, scholars have argued that previous assessments of parents’ distribution of time have not adequately measured tasks and demands (Coltrane 2000; Nippert-Eng 1996; Twigges, McQuillan, and Ferree 1999; Walzer 1996). One of the aspects unac- counted for in these studies is the mental dimension of tasks and demands, which was referred to here as mental labor. Mental labor is difficult to tap in quantitative research because it does not necessarily translate into physical activities that can be estimated using conventional time diary methods. The major contribution of the present study was that by using the ESM, mental labor could be tabulated and char- acterized. Hence the findings shed light on a relatively underexplored aspect of the gendered division of labor among employed families.

Results showed that mothers were more likely than fathers to engage in mental labor, but the gender gap in mental labor was overall small. Mothers engaged in mental labor in about one-fourth, and fathers in one-fifth, of their waking time. Nevertheless, several important differences in the content, context, and emotional

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implications of mental labor by gender were revealed. Consistent with the idea that breadwinning is an important issue for men (Christiansen and Palkovitz 2001; Gerson 2010; Townsend 2002), results showed that when they engaged in mental labor, fathers spent more time thinking about job-related matters than mothers. However, and contrary to expectations, these thoughts were less likely to spill over into fathers’ than into mothers’ nonwork domains. It may be that fathers are more adept than mothers at leaving their job-related concerns behind when they leave work. But interestingly, these results diverge from previous research showing that fathers were disturbed by work matters while at home more often than mothers (Glavin et al. 2011). An alternative explanation relates to the specific characteristics of the sample used in this study. The percentage of fathers working long hours in this sample was very high; nearly 60% reported working 46 or more hours per week. Thus the especially long hours that these fathers spend at work may leave them with little time to think about job-related matters outside of work or prompt them to reserve the little time they have left to think about other, nonwork-related things.

By contrast, job-specific mental labor among mothers was distributed almost evenly across the three contexts of paid work, unpaid work, and free-time activities, suggesting that their thoughts about paid work easily spilled over into other domains. These findings could reflect what Mennino and Brayfield (2005:110), who also found women to experience work-to-home spillover more often, refer to as women’s greater awareness “of the ways in which employment encroaches on family life.” Women may be more aware of and affected by these influences because, unlike men, the obligations entailed by their work and family roles are often at odds with each other (Garey 1999; Simon 1995). Working mothers, especially among the mid- dle class, are expected to be fully committed to their job and at the same time inten- sively engaged with their children (Bianchi et al. 2006; Blair-Loy 2003). These “competing devotions” require mothers to develop strategies for reconciling work and family demands. Because mothers are the ones who usually alter and adapt their work schedule to meet family demands, such as leaving work early to pick up children from day care or staying at home with a sick child (Gerson 2010; Jacobs and Gerson 2004; Keene and Reynolds 2005), they may feel that they “have to catch up” on work and as a result are easily preoccupied with job-related matters outside of the workplace.

Another gender difference pertains not to the quantitative but qualitative expe- rience of family-specific mental labor. Contrary to expectations, the results showed that the gender difference in the amount of time parents spent thinking about family matters throughout the day was negligible. Moreover, when engaging in mental labor, mothers and fathers were equally likely to think about family matters and the extent of spillover of thoughts about family matters into the other domains was sim- ilar for mothers and fathers. Echoing the cultural image of “new fathers” and con- sistent with previous studies, these findings suggest that fathers in dual-earner middle-class families are involved in those aspects of child care that pertain to parental responsibility and are closely linked to the concept of mental labor, namely participation in decision making about and planning for their children (Doucet 2006; Pleck 2010). However, the emotional implications of family-specific mental labor were substantially different for mothers and fathers. Only among mothers was

Costs of Thinking About Work and Family 931

this type of mental labor detrimental to emotional well-being. Regardless of con- text, thinking about family matters was significantly associated with lower positive affect and higher negative affect in mothers. By contrast, thinking about family mat- ters was not related to fathers’ emotional well-being. It appears that even if fathers are as preoccupied with family matters as mothers are, this type of mental labor is a source of emotional burden and stress for mothers alone.

In light of previous studies it could be expected that these fathers, who work particularly long hours, would have guilt feelings about not spending enough time with their children and not meeting the cultural expectations of involved fatherhood (Daly 1996), but the results of this study do not seem to support this idea. Instead, what they suggest is that despite the increase in fathers’ involvement at home, moth- ers continue to be cast as the bearers of the moral responsibility for the quality of family life and the well-being of children (Arendell 2001; Coltrane 1996; Hochschild 1989; Townsend 2002). Mothers are viewed and judged on the basis of a specific moral standpoint that defines what women ought to be doing and thinking as pri- mary caregivers (Doucet 2006). Worrying, it is argued, allows mothers to express moral responsibility and gain social acceptability. Hence, mothers are more likely than fathers to fear that they will be judged adversely by others in their family and community if they do not behave in ways that conform to the ideal of intensive par- enting (Doucet 2006; Ruddick 1995; Walzer 1996).

Notwithstanding these differences, several gender similarities are noteworthy. First, thinking about things to be done and time constraints during paid work appeared to be detrimental to the emotional well-being of both mothers and fathers. It should be noted, however, that the level of resolution of the ESM was not high enough to know what exactly parents had in mind when they reported cross-domain mental labor. This is an important limitation of the present study because the mea- sure of general mental labor did not allow distinguishing between the family and paid work domains. It was therefore impossible to determine, for example, whether parents were concerned about family (e.g., scheduling a doctor’s appointment for the child) or job-related matters (e.g., returning e-mails to clients or colleagues) when they reported about “things to do.” Nevertheless, despite being a coarse mea- sure, the high prevalence of this type of mental labor among both mothers and fathers provides yet another important indication of the time-squeezed and rushed pace of life of employed parents in contemporary dual-earner families (Bianchi et al. 2006; Jacobs and Gerson 2004; Mattingly and Sayer 2006; Roxburgh 2012).

Second, among both mothers and fathers paid work was found to be overall relatively insulated from thoughts about family matters. Both mothers and fathers reported thinking about family matters during paid labor in less than 6% of all mental labor signals.

The low level of mental family-to-work spillover found in this study is indica- tive of a high degree of role segmentation (Ashforth et al. 2000; Olson-Buchanan and Boswell 2006) in the context of paid work, where both mothers’ and fathers’ job rarely tends to be interrupted by concerns associated with their role as a parent or spouse. These findings resonate with Nippert-Eng’s (1996:39) observation that our current culture is dominated by a segmentist approach to home and work, which requires us to “reserve more of our home-related thoughts, activities, people,

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and objects for more private space and time.” It appears that both the mothers and fathers in this study managed to create clear boundaries around paid work and pre- clude its infringement by nonwork-related concerns and thus conformed to the norm of the ideal worker as someone who can dedicate all his/her attention to work while working.

While this is not surprising for fathers, the finding that paid work was highly insulated from family-related thoughts among mothers is intriguing because previ- ous research has shown that mothers were substantially more likely than fathers to have their paid work disturbed by family matters (Mennino and Brayfield 2005; Nippert-Eng 1996; Roehling et al. 2003). It is also striking that mental family-to- work spillover was not significantly associated with well-being for either mothers or fathers. These results could be explained by the particular characteristics of the sam- ple. Recall that the vast majority of the mothers included in this study were highly educated and employed in demanding professional and managerial positions. These educational and occupational characteristics may have led to the attenuation of gender differences reported elsewhere.

Third, the scope and emotional experience of mental spillovers into free-time activities were overall similar by gender. Findings showed that mothers and fathers were equally likely to think about family matters during free-time activities and that this type of mental intrusion was not associated with either mothers’ or fathers’ emotional well-being. These findings, which paint a slightly different picture than the one portrayed in previous research showing that women’s free-time activities were more often contaminated by nonleisure, mainly family-related, activities and demands than fathers’ free-time activities (Bittman and Wajcman 2000; Mattingly and Bianchi 2003), call for further investigation of this issue in future research.

Altogether, the present study reveals several important gender similarities with respect to mental labor, most notably, that fathers and mothers are equally likely to think about family matters. However, it also highlights the challenge that mothers in dual-earner middle-class families experience as they struggle to juggle multiple responsibilities at home and work. The findings suggest that mental labor may con- tribute to gender inequality among these families mainly because mothers’ concerns about their job tend to intrude into their other domains and because mothers endure the emotional repercussions of engaging in mental labor that revolves around family matters.

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