Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Date of Degree

9-2023

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Program

Psychology

Advisor

Charles Scherbaum

Committee Members

Yochi Cohen-Charash

Harold Goldstein

Wei Wang

Zhiqing Zhou

Subject Categories

Industrial and Organizational Psychology

Keywords

work-family conflict, work-family enrichment, genes, multilevel

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has shown how macro-level issues can influence how we manage work and family responsibilities. Yet, work-family (WF) research at different levels of analysis is relatively scarce. To address this, I take a multilevel lens to study WF conflict and enrichment in the context of micro-level factors (in the form of genes), macro-level factors (in the form of family and community-level demands), and their cross-level interactions (i.e., gene–environment interactions). To study genetic main effects, I drew from the work-home resources model to identify four candidate genes associated with conditions that could impact the ability to accrue WF resources and thus affect WF conflict and enrichment in turn. I further assessed how these genetic variants relate to WF conflict and enrichment via interactions with family demands (i.e., eldercare and grandchild care demands) and community-level demands (i.e., traffic congestion, inaccessibility of healthy food, and cost of living). Results provided little support for direct genetic relationships with WF conflict and enrichment. However, there was evidence that WF conflict and enrichment could be impacted via genetic interactions with family and community demands, with the most support concerning the strengthening of the negative relationship between eldercare demands and WF enrichment by certain genetic variants. The implications of these findings for the future WF research are also discussed.

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