(1) gender equality in opportunity structures and (2) support for employees regardless of socioeconomic location.
Moen (2003) argues that it is not enough for corporations to list such policies on the books. Employers must make continuous efforts to enforce these policies to cultivate a corporate climate that is truly responsive to the needs of families. Moen also suggests that employers and government officials need to keep better records of the variations (and the reasons for them) in employees’ work-hour and career-path arrangements in order to track the implications of these variations for employees and corporations. The information gained through such tracking may help to convince employers and policymakers of the heterogeneity in employees’ experiences both at work and at home and thus persuade them to change outdated workplace policies based on the breadwinner-homemaker template. Finally, and perhaps most important for families’ experiences of everyday hassles and stress, employers and policymakers must view employees’ vulnerabilities and family circumstances as key human resource, workforce, and labor issues. For family members struggling in uncertain economic times and working in low-wage jobs with inflexible work schedules, everyday hassles such as minor car accidents, sick children, and parent–teacher conferences scheduled during work hours can add strains that they may find hard to manage. Policies that focus on the risks, vulnerabilities, and family lives of workers are likely to attenuate the transfer of stress from everyday hassles to family relationships.
Discussion Questions
1 What are everyday hassles? How do they differ from more severe daily stressors? Provide some examples of anticipated and unanticipated everyday hassles, including how they may impact families who are (or are not) dealing with additional chronic stressors.
2 What, if any, differences exist in the experiences of everyday hassles for men and women? What implications does this have for couples’ relationships and overall family functioning?
3 What recommendations do you have for families to manage the stress of everyday hassles?
4 How might increases in technology help and/or hinder how families experience and manage everyday hassles?
5 What policy recommendations were suggested to help families manage everyday hassles? How might these changes support families?
References
Abel, E. K., & Nelson, M. K. (Eds.). (1990). Circles of care: Work and identity in women’s lives. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Allen, K. R., & Walker, A. J. (2000). Constructing gender in families. In R. M. Milardo & S. Duck (Eds.), Families as relationships (pp. 1–17). Chichester, England: Wiley.
Allen, K. R., Walker, A. J., & McCann, B. R. (2013). Feminism and families. In G. W. Peterson & K. R. Bush (Eds.), Handbook of marriage and the family (pp. 139–158). New York, NY: Springer.
Almeida, D. M. (2004). Using daily diaries to assess temporal friction between work and family. In A. C. Crouter & A. Booth (Eds.), Work-family challenges for low-income parents and their children (pp. 127–136). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Almeida, D. M., & Horn, M. C. (2004). Is daily life more stressful during middle adulthood? In C. D. Ryff & R. C. Kessler (Eds.), A portrait of midlife in the United States (pp. 425–451). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Almeida, D. M., McGonagle, K. A., Cate, R. C., Kessler, R. C., & Wethington, E. (2002). Psychological moderators of emotional reactivity to marital arguments: Results from a daily diary study. Marriage and Family Review, 34, 89–113.
Almeida, D. M., Stawski, R. S., & Cichy, K. E. (2010). Combining checklist and interview approaches for assessing daily stressors: The Daily Inventory of Stressful Events. In R. J. Contrada & A. Baum (Eds.), The handbook of stress science: Biology, psychology, and health (pp. 583–596). New York, NY: Springer.
Almeida, D. M., Wethington, E., & Kessler, R. C. (2002). The daily inventory of stressful events: An interview-based approach for measuring daily stressors. Assessment, 9, 41–55.
Amato, P. R., Johnson, D. R., Booth, A., & Rogers, S. J. (2003). Continuity and change in marital quality between 1980 and 2000. Journal of Marriage and Family, 65, 1–22.
American Psychological Association. (2019). Immigration policy: A psychological perspective. https://www.apa.org/advocacy/immigration/fact-sheet.pdf
Autor, D. H., & Dorn, D. (2013). The growth of low-skill service jobs and the polarization of the US labor market. The American Economic Review, 103(5), 1553–1597.
Berg, P., Kossek, E. E., Misra, K., & Belman, D. (2014). Work-life flexibility policies: Do unions affect employee access and use? Industrial & Labor Relations Review, 67(1), 111–137.
Bianchi, S. M., & Raley, S. B. (2005). Time allocation in families. In S. M. Bianchi, L. M. Casper, & R. B. King (Eds.), Work, family, health, and well-being (pp. 21–42). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Bianchi, S. M., Sayer, L. C., Milkie, M. A., & Robinson, J. P. (2012). Housework: Who did, does or will do it, and how much does it matter? Social Forces, 91(1), 55–63.
Bogenschneider, K. (2000). Has family policy come of age? A decade review of the state of U.S. family policy in the 1990s. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 62, 1136–1159.
Bogenschneider, K. (2014). Family policy matters: How policymaking affects families and what professionals can do. New York, NY: Routledge.
Bolger, N., DeLongis, A., Kessler, R. C., & Wethington, E. (1989). The contagion of stress across multiple roles. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 51, 175–183.
Boswell, W. R., & Olson-Buchanan, J. B. (2007). The use of communication technologies after hours: The role of work attitudes and work-life conflict. Journal of Management, 33(4), 592–610.
Bouza, J. R., Camacho-Thompson, D. E., Carlo, G., Franco, X., Garcia Coll, C., Halgunseth, L. C., Marks, A., Livas Stein, G., Suárez-Orozco, C., & White, R. M. B. (2018). The science is clear: Separating families has long-term damaging psychological and health consequences for children, families, and communities. Society for Research in Child Development: Statement of the Evidence. http://www.srcd.org/sites/default/files/resources/FINAL_The%20Science%20is%20Clear_0.pdf
Chelsey, N., & Johnson, B. E. (2015). Technology use and the new economy: Work extension, network connectivity, and employee distress and productivity. In S. K. Ammons & E. L. Kelly (Eds.), Work and family in the new economy (pp. 61–99). Bingley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing.
Cichy, K., Stawski, R. S., & Almeida, D. M. (2012). Racial differences in exposure and reactivity to daily family stressors. Journal of Marriage and Family, 74(3), 572–586.
Coltrane, S. (2000). Research on household labor: Modeling and measuring the social embeddedness of routine family work. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 62, 1208–1233.
Connelly, R., & Kimmel, J. (2014). If you’re happy and you know it: How do mothers and fathers in the US really feel about caring for their children? Feminist Economics.
Coontz, S. (2015). Revolution in intimate life and relationships. Family
