Has Work Replaced Home as a Haven? Examining Arlie Hochschild’s Time Bind Proposition

• In Event: 128 - Section on Organizations, Occupation and Work Paper Session. Work and Family: New Challenges, New Directions

Abstract

Using innovative data with objective and subjective measures of stress collected from 122 employed men and women, this paper tests the thesis of the Time Bind by asking whether people report lower stress levels at work than at home. The study finds consistent support for the Time Bind hypothesis when examining objective stress data: when participants were at work they had lower cortisol (i.e., lower stress levels) than when they were at home. Two variables moderated this association: income and children at home. For those with higher income, as well as those with children at home, more cortisol was observed when they were at work than when they were at home. However, participants also consistently reported higher subjective stress levels on work days than on non-work days, which is in direct contrast to the Time Bind hypothesis. While our overall findings support Hochschild’s hypothesis that stress levels decrease at work, it may also be that combining work and home may increase people’s subjective experience of daily stress.

Authors

• Sarah Damaske, Pennsylvania State University

• Joshua M Smyth, Pennsylvania State University

• Mattew J Zawadzki, Pennsylvania State University