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

Abstract

In 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.