Balancing Work and Family
Shequetta Green
PSYCH/704
September 17, 2012
Dr. Elizabeth DiBernardo

Balancing Work and Family Balancing work and family life is a challenge if one gives much effort in both areas. Everyone is not able to handle both a hectic work and family life as it does not seem normal (Rupert, Stevanovic, Hartman, Bryant, & Miller, 2012). Sometimes one needs assistance and advice on how to successfully have both areas of life (Voydanoff, 2005). Kathy Kudler is a business owner and single mother so she has little downtime whether she is at work or home. Other factors of her life, such as her upcoming nuptials and ill mother also affect her ability to find a balance between home life and work. Kathy may be definitely suffering from what is known as burnout. Burnout is a condition in which stress levels at work affect home life (Salmela-Aro, Tynkkynen, & Vuori, 2011). If Kathy Kudler cannot find an effective balance both areas of her life could suffer. The purpose of this paper is to create an outline of how and Industrial/Organizational Psychologist may intervene with the issues Kathy Kudler is currently facing. The paper will also provide three work and family interventions to her. Finally, the paper will show the pros and cons of each of the three work and family intervention suggestions. Having two children at home is a demanding task but Kathy Kudler feels as though she does not give this job her full attention. With a demanding career, Kathy Kudler may deem it necessary to take care of the financial well-being of her children first. Many parents make the mistake of thinking that finances are what a child needs over anything (Rupert, Stevanovic, Hartman, Bryant, & Miller, 2012). As parents, working adults must work to find a balance that works for both sides of life. Without this balance, work and family life began to affect each other. “During the past several decades, extensive theoretical and empirical work has demonstrated that work and family are interconnected domains” (Voydanoff, 2005, pg.471). According to these studies, person is not able to separate the two domains. An article by Salmela-Aro, Tynkkynen, and Vuori (2011) recognizes that parents who experience burnout at work often pass on the exhaustion and stress within the family. This means that Kathy Kudler could pass her ill feelings on to her two children. The children will recognize that something is wrong and carry these feeling to domains within their lives. The article explains how a burnout of any type not only affects the person but also affects others around him or her (Salmela-Aro, Tynkkynen, & Vuori, 2011). The article also explains that burnout is a condition of exhaustion related to demands of the situation (usually work) but, it could also occur within a school setting for the child of an adult suffering from burnout. The adverse conditions can affect the emotional well-being of anyone that comes in contact with someone suffering from burnout. Kathy Kudler could use the segmentation method as an intervention method and to prevent her children from feeling the wrath of her feelings of stress from home and work life.
Segmentation
Segmentation is a suggestion because it would allow Kathy Kudler to make a separation between the two. According to Voydanoff (2005) segmentation is a way to keep two domains separated by creating clear points of separation. These clear points allow little permeability and easier transition from one to another. This intervention method may help Kathy Kudler to focus on only work issues while at work and to focus on only home issues while at home. Better focus is always an asset when performing a task. Focus allows her to conserve less wasted time and energy. This proposed segmentation suggests that Kathy Kudler limits the time she spends in her transition from work to home. Voydanoff (2005) believes that less time commuting between the two coupled with less time consuming work activities could help decrease a blurring fusion of both domains. Sufficient time allows Kathy Kudler to unwind from work and better prepares her to better deal with home life and its demands. The pros of segmentation include less stress at home and work, fewer effects on those who Kathy Kudler affects, and a better ability to perform in both domains. The con of attempting to use segmentation as an intervention method is a delay in performance within the domains if Kathy Kudler is unsuccessful. If this method does not work for her this means she wastes time that she does not have to waste.
Cognitive Appraisal If Kathy Kudler is unsuccessful with segmentation, she should attempt to perform another intervention method called cognitive appraisal. Cognitive Appraisal is a form of assessing a situation with what is known about the situation and deciding if it is good, bad, or irrelevant to one’s well-being (Voydanoff, 2005). This method is something that Kathy Kudler can use before going into a situation to help better prepare for it. If Kathy Kudler can appraise a situation and see that it is a negative one she can develop a better way to handle the demand that would cause less stress. Another use for this intervention method is to assist Kathy Kudler with appreciating the situations that work positively for her well-being (Rupert, Stevanovic, Hartman, Bryant, & Miller, 2012). Examples of positive cognitive appraisals are family time and relaxation time. She must also be able to identify situations that are irrelevant to her well-being. The benefit of identifying these situations is to not exert useful energy into them (Voydanoff, 2005). She should apply this energy toward something positive. A developmental program, which seeks to focus and emphasize the positive aspects of an organization, is something Kathy Kudler should focus her energy on. Competing with a celebrity’s weight is not something she should focus her energy on. Learning not to waste energy is one pro of cognitive appraisal. Another is having the ability to organize and prioritize events based on the projected outcome (Voydanoff, 2005). A con of this intervention method is over use and placing too much emphasis on projected positive events. While Kathy Kudler may not want to deal with those scenarios that seem to have a negative effect on her well-being, she cannot simply avoid them. Doing the cognitive assessment prior to the situation may cause her to lose interest in the situation or avoid it.

Integration Another intervention method Kathy Kudler can use to help with her work and family stress is to integrate the two domains. Voydanoff (2005) describes integration as a way to connect the family and work domains. In integration “work and family activities overlap, boundaries are flexible and permeable, and role blurring is high” (Voydanoff, 2005, pg. 494). For Kathy Kudler integration could help her solve issues that would otherwise cause stress for her. For example, if she has two employees who are involved in a conflict Kathy Kudler can decide how to handle the situation by exploring how she would handle the situation if it were her two children in the conflict. Even if an adult conflict and a child conflict are different, the base of the solution may be the same. She could also use integration for bring home some of her work that does not require much attention (Voydanoff, 2005). This way she can focus on both her work and her home life. Sometime being there makes a huge difference. Her being inside her home will extinguish any doubts that she cares about what goes on in her family. Hopefully, her children will see she is trying and this will give her a more positive feeling about needing to put so much energy into both domains. The pros of using the integration intervention method are to connect the main domains of life without having to completely focus on one over the other and to use one domain to solve the issues of the other domain (Voydanoff, 2005). The con of using the integration method is that one will focus too-little energy on one domain to provide sufficient results. When work and family life combine to create a demand greater than one can handle something must be done to combat the situation. Voydanoff (2005) states on page 493 that “work-family conflict is a form of inter-role conflict in which the demands of work and family roles are incompatible in some respect so that participation in one role is more difficult because of participation in another role” (pg. 493). Kathy Kudler will want to avoid the work-family conflict because she is already having issues with stress between the two domains of her life. Rupert, Stevanovic, Hartman, Bryant, and Miller (2012) believe that this type of conflict is bidirectional. This means that work life can cause conflict within home life and home life can to cause conflict within work life. Work and home life are obviously important to Kathy Kudler because she is seeking help with balancing the two. Ultimately, she must find a way to become an active agent in both domains while enhancing the functioning of the two domains if she wishes to continue with the current factors and have a positive balance (Rupert, Stevanovic, Hartman, Bryant, & Miller, 2012).

References

Rupert, P. A., Stevanovic, P., Hartman, E. R. T., Bryant, F. B., & Miller, A. (2012). Predicting Work–Family Conflict and Life Satisfaction among Professional Psychologists. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1037/a0026675.
Salmela-Aro, K., Tynkkynen, L., & Vuori, J. (2011). Parents’ Work Burnout and Adolescents’ School Burnout: Are They Shared? European Journal of Developmental Psychology, 8(2), 215-227. Doi:10.1080/1740562090357860
Voydanoff, P. (2005). Consequences of Boundary-Spanning Demands and Resources for Work- To-Family Conflict and Perceived Stress. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 10(4),491-503.