Parental and Occupational Stress as Predictors of Depressive Symptoms among Dual-Income Couples: A Multilevel Modeling Approach

Abstract

This study evaluates the influence of parental and occupational stress on depressive symptoms. Multi-level modeling is used with a matched pairs, couples research design to address statistical dependency relations among husband-wife pairs and to estimate the contributions of individual- and couple-level variables on depressive symptoms. The findings of 200 dual-earner, married couples with children (x = 2.8 children) indicate that higher levels of parental and occupational stress are equally predictive of depressive symptoms for husbands and their wives. Lower marital satisfaction, less family cohesion, and lengthier marriages are also equally predictive of depressive symptoms for husbands and their wives. Key Words: depression, dual-earners, occupational stress, parental stress. Dual-earner couples have become common in contemporary society's landscape of traditional and nontraditional families. Historical shifts in the workplace over the past few decades have included substantial increases in women working outside the home either part-time or full-time. The consequences of these historical shifts have been of considerable interest to a variety of investigators, including those interested in the impact of dual-earner couples on family functioning and mental health (e.g., Aneshensel & Pearlin, 1987; Barnett, Marshall, Raudenbush, & Brennan, 1993; Pleck, 1985; Wethington & Kessler, 1989). Some of the initial research on dual-earner couples focused not on family functioning and mental health, per se, but rather on the compounding of multiple-role stresses (e.g., occupational, as well as parental and marital) and their potentially adverse impact on women's mental health (e.g., Barnett, Marshall, & Singer, 1992; Frankenhaeuser, Lundberg, & Chesney, 1991; Repetti, Matthews, & Waldron, 1989). Much of this research centered on women's health, rather than on men's health, because there typically was not a commensurate shift in men's roles toward the addition of burdensome homemaking tasks. The upshot of this research was that workplace participation by women often increased their selfesteem and feelings of perceived worth, rather than increasing mental health problems (e.g., Barnett & Marshall, 1991; Repetti et al., 1989; Wilsnack & Cheloha, 1987). Parenthetically, this generalization of previous findings does not suggest that the occurrence of multiple stressors across these social roles (i.e., occupational, parental, marital) is not associated with poorer mental health, only that there is nothing inherently stressful in women's participation in the workplace that is inevitably associated with poorer mental health. Further, higher levels of multiple stressors are detrimental to the mental well-being of men, as well as women. For instance, the combined impact of occupational and parental role stress and marital discord is associated with lower levels of mental health for both men and women. More recent research in this area has focused on the importance of different social roles (e.g., occupational, parental) for men and women and the association of successful functioning in these roles to mental health indicators such as depression (e.g., Barnett et al., 1993; Bielby & Bielby, 1989; Deaux, 1984; Simon, 1992). The initial assumptions of many researchers investigating this topic were that occupational role functioning would be more salient than parental or family role functioning to mental health for men, whereas parental or family role functioning would be more salient than occupational role functioning to mental health for women. These assumptions have been seriously challenged by the empirical findings and critiques in the literature (e.g., Barnett, 1993; Rodin & Ickovics, 1990; Wethington & Kessler, 1989). Briefly, expectations and socialization for social roles, rather than inherent gender differences, account for the seemingly disparate findings in the literature. …