My topic was able to stem both from the music video “Without Me” by Eminem, but it also pertains to the situation we have at hand now. As technology progresses more and more of our careers can be handled to some extent remotely. Basically, a majority of jobs in the tech industry can be remote, and due to the global pandemic in place many other job categories are switching to this too.
Something that is crucial for most people are their relationships. This may be between significant others, children, or even just roommates. I was curious about the different that it makes to interpersonal relationships if a person is able to work from home. This means in general that they will have more time to spend with each other (since travel and such is also eliminated), and will share a working environment.
But, one could also say it can damage those relationships. Since we cant spend 24/7 with the same people without getting a little bored or feeling like something is missing. With this essay I hope to find out what happens.
How does working at home affect interpersonal relationships with family.
- Do people want to spend time with someone they see all the time
- Time, relationship, constant
- Are people able to be as productive at work while increasing their family bonds while working remotely?
- Remote working, productive at home vs office, family
- Does working at home bring stress to the household
- Working at home, stress, family
Schall, Marie Antoinette, “The Relationship Between Remote Work and Job Satisfaction: The Mediating Roles of Perceived Autonomy, Work-Family Conflict, and Telecommuting Intensity” (2019). Master’s Theses. 5017. DOI: https://doi.org/10.31979/etd.2×82-58pg https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/etd_theses/5017
After many different attempts at research and finding various papers that did not satisfact my goals. I found this one. The Relationship Between Remote Work and Job Satisfaction: The Mediating Roles of Perceived Autonomy, Work-Family Conflict, and Telecommuting Intensity is a scholarly paper which encompasses a majority of the factors that are variables in and results of working from home compared to working in the office.
This paper shows how remote work was able to change overall job satisfaction. This included work-family conflict, which is what I am focusing on. In conclusion after polling the participants the results yielded that the majority of people strongly disagreed with the statement that remote work interfered with their family life.
Personally I think this paper did a great job of getting the point across. However, I do feel it was too broad. It gave me the information I needed but just that. It did not provide me with anything more or anything I can build on. Infact, the section for work family conflict is just a paragraph long. I also think that the tests could have been performed with a wider audience, and now would be a great time to do the testing. Since many people who were not working remote were all of a sudden forced into it. That may be great information to collect. This study also used mathematical and statistical information to come to its conclusions, which I think is great because it provides concrete proof and evidence. However it would be beneficial to make the paper more understandable to the masses.
“The participants’ responses were averaged to create an overall work-family conflict score in which higher scores indicated higher work-family conflict.”
“According to the sample’s telecommuting intensity results, the participants spent on average 13.7 hours of their week working remotely, which classifies the average participant as a low-intensity telecommuter”
“Cronbach’s alpha demonstrated high reliability of the scale (α = .95).”
“Remote work and work-family conflict had a moderately, negative significant relationship, r(168) = -.24, p < .01, suggesting that those who were engaged in remote work experienced lower work-family conflict.”
Elston, M. (2020, April 01). Parenting and working from home is hurting my well-being. Companies shouldn’t be so demanding during the COVID-19 pandemic: COMMENTARY. Retrieved from https://www.baltimoresun.com/opinion/op-ed/bs-ed-op-0405-working-parenting-home-20200402-xtnyv7bhpnbjvh24izvjek3wi4-story.html
Something that working from home has a benefit of it stha you are in complete control of everything. But this can come with repercussions too. That is what this Artcle dives into.
Even though you may not need to pay for sitters to watch over your house or kids, the responsibility now falls on the parent. What this means it that in addition to working a job from home. They must now take on the job of taking care of their kids and family. Which led to more stress and issues.
I may not have a say in the life of the person that wrote the article but I do have a few questions. If you took the initiative and made the choice to have kids and raise them. Why must it be such a chore to actually do so. If anything you can still hire a babysitter? I think this is one of the downsides. People can get sick of things really quickly, and if you see someone like family or your kids all the time. You may start to notice the negative things much more. This gives me alot to write about. How some people can only handle one job. Either their workplace job, or the job of being a productive member of the family. Both benefit the family, but in different ways. The workplace itself needs to be more accommodating of this fact, and realize that people have more in their lives.
“But the new remote work environment falls short in fostering the health and well-being of working parents like me.”
“Many parents working from home are expected to work at full capacity, while acting as the single point of contact for healthy, active kids in a confined space. Children require meals, homework help, fresh air and exercise, entertainment and activities, supervision, attention, cleaning up after and in some cases sick care. “
“This is not a lifestyle choice, it is the price of being able to provide for our families right now.”
“No more soccer practice or play dates to count on for that hour of “me” time.”
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As technology progresses we must also fear about how many of todays job can once be taken over by computers and these human workers won’t mean a lot. But for now as this pandemic has impacted the world, many jobs have went remotely, but many were not and those have suffered. There are many benefits to working remotely from home that I agree with you, seeing family more and being home, but I also think it can decrease the level of stress for many. Many have a long commute in the morning and afternoon, so staying home can save them the stress of the commute.
Hey Leonard, I never thought there would actually be research for this topic since it is a recent topic that is being discussed, but I am glad you were able to figure out a compelling way to format this topic. I like how it is relevant and there are some facts/statistics you can base your research of off. A suggestion for when you write your research paper may be to perhaps include a section in it about the psychology to why people become less interested in each other over time if they were put in a room for a long time the way quarantine is making some people do. Perhaps you can include something about brain behavior or patterns that happens when two people are put in a certain place for a long period of time.
Hello Lenard!
I liked what you were talking about. I want to work from home, too, like Jacky, but I can’t. I’ve often read that big companies like Google would start working remotely on a permanent basis. Therefore, I hope you ‘re going to be discussed more in the future. There are clear pros and cons of this, and it’s interesting that you discuss the working parent who thinks he doesn’t have a good time.
Hey Leonard! Your topic can’t be any more relevant during these times. Your blog reminds me of something that my economics professor said. He said that he had a friend who had some job that involved doing the legal work for divorces and according to his friend, whenever economy started getting worse and more people became unemployed, there were more divorces. A subtopic you can look at might be the divorce rates during the pandemic.
Author
Oooh, that’s a good one. I’ll add it to my list of things to look into. Thanks!
Hello Leonard, Interesting topic to talk about. I personally wanted to work from home in the future even before the pandemic. I agree that if you see someone all the time you might get a little tired of it, however, I do not know if that translates to my personal family. The quote “Children require meals, homework help, fresh air and exercise, entertainment and activities, supervision, attention, cleaning up after and in some cases sick care” seems to be the issue nowadays. With quarantine, some struggle to provide this while some might find it easier.
Author
Yea I agree. I had trouble getting my footing in the topic but you definitely helped! Thanks for the feedback!