Role Burdens and Physical Health of Women and Men

This article looks at role burdens experienced by women and men, asking if heavy burdens are linked with poor physical health status and frequent health care. The role burden variables refer to job schedule, feelings about roles and life, time constraints and pressures, family dependency, and levels of role involvement and responsibility. The data source is the Health In Detroit Study, which has health items from a retrospective interview and prospective health diaries. Results show that dissatisfaction with roles/life and feelings of very great or very little time pressure are associated with poor health. To a lesser extent, very low or very high objective time constraints, irregular and short job schedules, no or high family dependency, and very low or very high income responsibility are linked with poor health. By contrast, having numerous roles is associated with good health. Some of these results point toward social causation (how the quantity and quality of roles influence health) and others to social selection (how health influences role involvements). The relationships are similar for women and men. But women are more at risk of poor health because, more often than men, they tend to have few roles (especially nonemployment), more dissatisfaction with their main role and life, low time constraints, low income responsibility, and irregular job schedules. In conclusion, role burdens may lie more in subjective feelings about one's activities than in their objective characteristics. Having low quality roles may jeopardize health, whereas having numerous ones can help maintain or enhance it.