Living with nonstandard work schedules -- Wellbeing challenges for Australian parents

Abstract

Shift work is prevalent and has the potential to impact workers' mental health and wellbeing. However, existing research regarding an association between shift work and wellbeing is mixed, and there is a paucity of research examining the wellbeing impacts specifically for working parents. The overarching goal of this thesis is to clarify to what extent shift work is associated with wellbeing specifically for parents (mothers and fathers), focusing on the challenges shift work might bring to negotiating work and family responsibilities. Parental wellbeing is explored using three indicators - psychological distress, work-family conflict and couple relationship quality. While shift work is primarily positioned as an 'adverse exposure', the dynamic, bi-directional nature of the relationships is explored. Three inter-related studies were conducted: Study 1 is a cross-sectional study of 1208 employed parents participating in the "Families at Work" nationwide survey. Using moderated-mediation analyses, study 1 investigated the association between shift work and psychological distress, whether work-family conflict explained this association, and gender differences. The findings show some evidence that working irregular shifts was associated with higher work-family conflict in connection with higher distress, with fathers at greater risk. Working regular shifts was associated with greater distress (largely for mothers), but was not related to work-family conflict, suggesting other mechanisms are likely involved. Study 2 investigated a possible causal link between working shifts and workers' parental wellbeing (i.e. psychological distress, work-family conflict and couple relationship quality). The study used five waves of longitudinal data (n=1915 couples) from a nationally representative sample of dual-earner parents (from The Longitudinal Study of Australian Children - LSAC) - positioning shift work as an occupational exposure. This study adopted a hybrid analysis model to identify within-individual changes in wellbeing in association with changes in shift work (separate from time-invariant differences between individuals). Changes in shift work were found to be linked to changes in fathers' (but not mothers') relationship quality, and this association could not be attributed to shift working fathers' personal or work-related characteristics. Study 3 was conducted as a complement to study 2, but the reverse causal direction was tested to explore whether health selection might drive any association between shift work and wellbeing. Using a sample from the LSAC largely comparable to study 2, population-average logit models investigated whether parents' wellbeing predicted a subsequent transition into or out of shift work. The results showed that mothers with higher psychological distress were more likely to move into shift work. No other significant associations were found. The findings suggest caution is needed when assuming the causal direction of associations found between shift work and mental health, especially in cross-sectional studies. Overall, the findings from this thesis provide some evidence that shift working parents in Australia have poorer wellbeing than non-shift working parents. However, the findings differ somewhat for mothers and fathers, may depend on the type of shift work undertake and the wellbeing indicator measured. Further research is needed to clarify the nature of these relationships to inform family-friendly policy and practices to support shift working parents. Show more