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Domestic Stress and Well-Being of Employed Women: Interplay Between Demands and Decision Control at Home

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Abstract

Family researchers have suggested that shared decision control is important for coping with stressful demands at home, whereas occupational stress theorists view personal decision control as an essential coping resource. We studied the effects of home demands, personal decision control, and shared decision control at home on burnout and satisfaction with life, using Karasek’s job-demands-control model to gauge home stress and its outcomes. Participants were 133 mothers employed in secretarial and managerial jobs. We hypothesized that shared control would correlate more strongly with burnout and satisfaction with life than would personal control. In multiple regression analyses, demands had independent main effects on both outcomes. Shared control significantly predicted satisfaction with life, but not burnout, and personal control predicted neither. It is suggested that in families (as in teams), shared decision control may be a more potent coping resource than personal control.

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Acknowledgments

This study was supported by the Committee for Preventive Action and Research in Occupational Health, The Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, Jerusalem, Israel.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Sociology of Health, Faculty of Health Sciences, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, P.O.B. 653, Beer-Sheva, 84105, Israel

    Talma Kushnir

  2. Behavioral Medicine Unit, National Institute of Occupational & Environmental Health at Loewenstein Hospital, Ra’anana, Israel

    Talma Kushnir & Samuel Melamed

Authors
  1. Talma Kushnir
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  2. Samuel Melamed
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Correspondence to Talma Kushnir.

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Kushnir, T., Melamed, S. Domestic Stress and Well-Being of Employed Women: Interplay Between Demands and Decision Control at Home. Sex Roles 54, 687–694 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-006-9040-0

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