Washington, D.C. — Are you checking you smartphone every two seconds when you are off duty? Are you required to carry a Blackberry, iPhone or other communication device off duty? Do you often receive and respond to work-related calls and e-mails during family time or your personal downtime?

Although these communications technologies are often seen as a way to balance work and family life, a new study published in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior suggests that these technologies take a toll on the mental health of workers, particularly women.

The study, Boundary-Spanning Work Demands and Their Consequences for Guilt and Psychological Distress, used data from a national survey of American workers. University of Toronto researchers asked participants how often they were contacted outside the workplace by phone, e-mail or text about work-related matters. They found that women who were contacted frequently by supervisors, co-workers or clients reported higher levels of psychological distress.

In contrast, men who received frequent work-related contacts outside of normal work hours were less affected by it.

“Initially, we thought women were more distressed by frequent work contact because it interfered with their family responsibilities more so than men,” says lead author Paul Glavin, a PhD candidate in sociology, University of Toronto. “However, this wasn’t the case. We found that women are able to juggle their work and family lives just as well as men, but they feel more guilty as a result of being contacted. This guilt seems to be at the heart of their distress.”

The findings show that many women feel guilty dealing with work issues at home even when the work-related contact doesn’t interfere with their family lives. Men, on the other hand, are less likely to experience guilt when responding to work-related issues at home.

Co-author Scott Schieman says the findings suggest that men and women may still encounter different expectations over the boundaries separating work and family life — and these different expectations may have unique emotional consequences.

“Guilt seems to play a pivotal role in distinguishing women’s work-family experiences from men’s,” says Schieman, a University of Toronto sociology professor and lead investigator of the larger study that funded this research. “While women have increasingly taken on a central role as economic providers in today’s dual-earner households, strong cultural norms may still shape ideas about family responsibilities. These forces may lead some women to question or negatively evaluate their family role performance when they’re trying to navigate work issues at home.”

About the American Sociological Association
The American Sociological Association (www.asanet.org), founded in 1905, is a non-profit membership association dedicated to serving sociologists in their work, advancing sociology as a science and profession, and promoting the contributions to and use of sociology by society. The Journal of Health and Social Behavior is a quarterly, peer-reviewed journal of the ASA.

The research article described above is available by request for members of the media. For a copy of the full study, contact Daniel Fowler, ASA’s Media Relations and Public Affairs Officer, at 202/527-7885 or pubinfo@asanet.org.

For more information about the study, members of the media can also contact April Kemick, media relations officer, University of Toronto, at 416/978-5949 or april.kemick@utoronto.ca.