“A lot of sacrifices:” Work–family spillover and the food choice coping strategies of low-wage employed parents

doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2006.06.029

Social Science & Medicine

Volume 63, Issue 10, November 2006, Pages 2591-2603

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2006.06.029 Get rights and content

Abstract

Integrating their work and family lives is an everyday challenge for employed parents. Competing demands for parents’ time and energy may contribute to fewer meals prepared or eaten at home and poorer nutritional quality of meals. Thus, work–family spillover (feelings, attitudes, and behaviors carried over from one role to another) is a phenomenon with implications for nutrition and health. The aim of this theory-guided constructivist research was to understand how low-wage employed parents’ experiences of work–family spillover affected their food choice coping strategies. Participants were 69 black, white and Latino mothers and fathers in a Northeastern US city. We explored participants’ understandings of family and work roles, spillover, and food choice strategies using open-ended qualitative interviews. Data analysis was based on the constant comparative method. These parents described affective, evaluative, and behavioral instances of work–family spillover and role overload as normative parts of everyday life and dominant influences on their food choices. They used food choice coping strategies to: (1) manage feelings of stress and fatigue, (2) reduce the time and effort for meals, (3) redefine meanings and reduce expectations for food and eating, and (4) set priorities and trade off food and eating against other family needs. Only a few parents used adaptive strategies that changed work or family conditions to reduce the experience of conflict. Most coping strategies were aimed at managing feelings and redefining meanings, and were inadequate for reducing the everyday hardships from spillover and role overload. Some coping strategies exacerbated feelings of stress. These findings have implications for family nutrition, food expenditures, nutritional self-efficacy, social connections, food assistance policy, and work place strategies.

Section snippets

Background

Employed parents face daily challenges to their food choices resulting from the need to integrate demanding work and family lives. Increasing family work hours, work/family conflict, and work schedule inflexibility give rise to fewer family meals prepared or eaten at home, typically of poorer nutritional quality. These circumstances make food choices among employed parents in many western cultures an issue with importance for health promotion and disease prevention, especially among low-income

Participant recruitment

We recruited low-wage employed parents through community agencies, newspaper advertisements, posters in neighborhood stores and at worksites, and using snowball techniques. We recruited mothers and fathers between 25 and 51 years of age, working 20 or more hours a week in one of four low-wage occupational groups (service, clerical, sales, or production occupation) and having at least one child 16 years of age or younger living at home three or more days a week. All participants lived in a

Findings

Thirty-five employed mothers and 34 employed fathers from 25 to 51 years of age participated in this study (Table 1). Participants self-identified as belonging to one or more of the three main racial/ethnic groups in the research community: black, white, and Latino. While most participants had a spouse or partner living with them, 15% of fathers and 46% of mothers were single parents. While all participants had one or more children 16 years of age or younger living with them, some shared child

Discussion

Work–family spillover and role overload were experienced as everyday hardships that necessitated daily food choice coping strategies by the low-wage working parents who participated in this study. While some experiences of spillover were positive, negative spillover from work to family was presented by participants as a dominant influence on their food choice strategies. This study expands prior work in this area by explicitly identifying the sources of negative and positive spillover at work

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Kathy Dudley for help with interviewing, Amy Brown for help with coding, and the study participants for sharing details of their daily lives with us. This study was funded by the National Cancer Institute RO1CA102684-01.

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“A lot of sacrifices:” Work–family spillover and the food choice coping strategies of low-wage employed parents

Abstract

Section snippets

Background

Participant recruitment

Findings

Discussion

Acknowledgments

Journal of the American Dietetic Association

Journal of The American Dietetic Association

Preventive Medicine

Journal of Nutrition Education

Appetite

Social Science and Medicine

Journal of Nutrition Education

The Lancet

Journal of The American Dietetic Association

Social Science and Medicine

Social Science and Medicine

Journal of Nutrition Education

Journal of Nutrition Education

Consequences associated with work-to-family conflict: A review and agenda for future research

Journal of Occupational and Health Psychology

Role theory perspectives on work and family

Is anyone doing the housework? Trends in the gender division of household labor

Social Forces

America's changing appetite: Food consumption and spending to 2020

Food Review

Distinction: A social critique of the judgment of taste

Employment and family lives: Equalities and inequalities

The ecology of human development: Experiments by nature and design

Research on household labor: Modeling and measuring the social embeddedness of routine family work

Journal of Marriage and the Family

Feeding the family

The relationship between daily marital interaction, work, and health-promoting behaviors in dual-earner couples

Journal of Family Issues

Employment, flexibility and gender

Cancer prevention among working class, multiethnic adults: Results of the Health Directions—Health Centers Study

American Journal of Public Health

Family obligations and social change

Coping: Pitfalls and promise

Annual Review of Psychology

Work–family balance

Work–family conflict, gender, and health-related outcomes: A study of employed parents in two community samples

Journal of Occupational and Health Psychology

Beyond the looking glass self: Social structure and efficacy-based self-esteem

Social Psychology Quarterly

Modernity and self-identity: Self and society in the late modern age