How I was brought up? Parental SES and adult work conflict, stress, and satisfaction

AbstractIn an American economy marked by intense devotion to work, worker well-being is diminished by perceived work-nonwork conflict, especially within higher-status occupations. Yet, work and labor perceptions are constructed within an intergenerational attainment process. This raises the important issue of whether parental origins are determinative of perceived work stress during adulthood. We combine multiple years of national data (2010, 2014, and 2018 General Social Survey) and utilize life-course models of health to begin to understand the differential roles of personal and parental socioeconomic statuses for perceived work conflict and stress in adulthood. We find that educational attainment is linked to perceived work-family and family-work conflict, whereas occupational attainment is linked to work-family conflict as well as perceived job stress and satisfaction. These patterns do not change significantly upon controlling parental socioeconomic status. Parental education and socioeconomic standing associate with adult work stress and perceived family-work interference, but these associations mostly become insignificant once adult attainment is considered. In total, our findings are more consistent with pathway models of life-course stress and well-being, implicating adulthood circumstances, than with critical-period models that emphasize the enduring importance of childhood characteristics. Notes1 From the year 2000 onward, the General Social Survey has offered multiple race and ethnicity variables. Here, we implement the most commonly used variable, RACE. Other variables, such as RACECEN and HISPANIC, may be used in the construction of more specific and accurate racial and ethnic taxonomies. In devising analyses, we implemented several ways of measuring race and ethnicity, and these made little to no difference to the key coefficient estimates presented in the manuscript tables.Additional informationNotes on contributorsMatthew A. AnderssonMatthew A. Andersson is associate professor of sociology at Baylor University. His research projects take diverse approaches to health and well-being disparities. In a book project, The Science of Dignity, he measures how subjective dignity matters in America (with Steven Hitlin, under contract with Oxford University Press). His coauthored research advanced to finalist for the 2022 Rosabeth Moss Kanter Award (with Michael A. Garcia and Jennifer Glass).Laura UpenieksLaura Upenieks is assistant professor of sociology at Baylor University. Her research interests lie in health inequalities over the life course, aging and health, and the sociology of religion. Her recent research is published in Journal of Health and Social Behavior, Society and Mental Health, Social Science and Medicine, Sociology of Religion, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Journal of Aging and Health, and Research on Aging.