Bringing Work Home: Parents' Work-Family Conflict, Frustration, and Youths' Work Beliefs

The study of work-family conflict has continued to increase in importance in the past few decades. The processes and mechanisms through which work affects the family have often been explained using the spillover mechanisms. Spillover, an intra-individual contagion process, occurs when an employee's work experiences carry over into the home or when emotions and experiences from home are carried over to the work domain. Most of the current studies on spillover effects are conducted at the level of the individuals and/or between spouses. Much less research attention however, has been devoted toward investigating the effects of work-family conflict on other family members, such as the children. This study examines the effect of parents' work-family conflict on their children. This focus is of theoretical and practical importance as it helps increase the understanding of how parents' work experiences permeate the family in ways that have consequences for their children. This study has three main objectives. First, it expands the scope of the work-family literature by examining the effect of parents' work-family conflict on their children's work beliefs in an Asian context, specifically Hong Kong. Second, this research contributes to the work-family literature by developing and testing a model that clarifies the processes through which parents' work experience affects their frustration and their children's perceived parental frustration, parenting behavior and beliefs about work. Third, this study builds upon and extends previous theoretical efforts on work and family by systematically linking this stream of work with the literature on emotion, youths' work beliefs and attitudes.