Psychological Availability: How work experiences spill over into daily family interactions

Abstract

This dissertation investigated how workday residuals spill over into the quality of marital relationships and into the quality of parent–child interactions after the workday, through being more or less psychologically available for the other. In addition, in this dissertation we investigated which individuals are more prone to work-family spillover than others, thereby looking at differences in boundary management strategies and at differences in level of dispositional self-control. Chapter 2 investigates how negative and positive residuals of the workday spill over into the partner relationship. To unravel the mechanism of this spillover, this study introduces the concept of “psychological availability,” which refers to the individual’s ability and motivation to direct psychological resources at the partner. A survey was conducted among 313 Dutch dual-earner couples with children, using dyadic data analysis to analyze both partners simultaneously in 1 model. Psychological availability mediated the link between negative and positive work-related residuals (i.e., work-related negative mood, exhaustion, rumination and work-related positive mood and vigor, respectively) and marital behavior. The findings suggest that partners’ workday residuals spill over into the marital relationship through being more or less psychologically available for each other. In chapter 3, we used data from a sample of Dutch dual earner parents (N = 261) to show that parents’ psychological availability acted as a link between negative and positive workday residuals (i.e., work-related negative mood, exhaustion, rumination, and work-related positive mood and vigor) and the quality of parent – child interactions after the workday. Parents’ preference for type of role combination moderated these relationships in that evidence for negative spillover was found only for parents who tended to integrate work and family life, whereas positive spillover was found only for parents who tended to segment work and family life. These findings suggest that workday residuals combined with parents’ boundary management strategies have important implications for the parent – child relationship. In chapter 4, we investigated how and for whom experiences of the workday spill over into relationship functioning at home. Two correlational studies and one experimental study were conducted among Dutch dual-earners with children. Moderated mediation analyses showed that work demands spill over into relationship behavior through the depletion of temporary self-regulatory resources and subsequently a decrease in psychological availability for the partner. Whether work demands spill over into relationship behavior was dependent on dispositional self-control in that evidence for negative spillover was only found for individuals low in dispositional self-control. The experimental study showed that the induction of gratitude for the partner after the workday helped individuals low in dispositional control to prevent from negative spillover into the partner relationship. These findings imply that it can be prevented that a draining workday has a negative impact on the partner relationship by either having good self-control qualities or by the induction of gratitude for the partner. Chapter 5 addresses the most important questions that are answered by the dissertation, its theoretical, methodological and practical implications.