Cognitive Factors in Effectively Coping with Home/Career Stress

Abstract

Many women who choose to combine family and career often report stress related to professional, parental, and marital obligations and expectations. Surprisingly, little research has examined the adequacy of women’s efforts to cope with this stress. In particular, research is needed to identify the critical cognitive variables that can influence women’s inferences about home/career stress and their choice of coping strategies. Such data would be useful for targeting the cognitive change mechanisms in any cognitive-based treatment interventions for this population. The present study compared two models for describing critical cognitive factors that influence women’s choices of effective coping strategies for dealing with home/career stress. In the first model, two cognitive characteristics of a woman, her sex-role beliefs and her conceptual level, are viewed as the major causal factors that influence her choice of effective coping strategies. In the second model, a woman’s sex-role beliefs and her conceptual level are assumed to influence her cognitive appraisal of her level of stress and/or her appraisal of her resources for coping with stress, and these appraisals subsequently influence the woman’s choice of effective coping strategies. The findings from this study provide some support for a cognitive mediated model of home/career stress-coping. In this model, a woman’s sex-role beliefs and her conceptual level influence her cognitive appraisal of her resources for coping with the stressful demands, and this appraisal then influences her level of effectiveness in coping with the situation. In particular, a woman’s sex-role beliefs and her cognitive appraisal of her resources for coping with stressful home/career demands appear to be significant cognitive variables that influence her level of effective coping. Androgynous women tend to report more confidence in their ability to cope with stressful home/career demands than do feminine women, and women who appraise themselves as having more resources to cope with stressful home/career demands tend to select more effective coping strategies.