Browsing by Author "Mitropoulos, Tanya"

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    When Daily Challenges Become Too Much During COVID-19: Implications of Family and Work Demands for Work–Life Balance Among Parents of Children With Special Needs
    Calderwood, Charles; Breaux, Rosanna; ten Brummelhuis, Lieke L.; Mitropoulos, Tanya; Swanson, Courtney S. (American Psychological Association, 2022-01-01)
    Working parents of children with special needs (i.e., emotional, behavioral, and/or learning difficulties) face recurrent stressors that can make balancing work and family demands difficult. This strain has been magnified during the COVID-19 pandemic, as these parents often need to take on greater responsibility in supporting their children’s remote learning, while still meeting their own job-related responsibilities. Accordingly, working parents of special needs children may be particularly vulnerable to adverse outcomes stemming from pandemic-induced changes to work (e.g., teleworking) and education (e.g., remote instruction). We sought to understand how daily family and work challenges influence satisfaction with work–life balance (WLB) in this priority population, with an emphasis on contextualizing this process through chronic job stress perceptions. Conducting a 10-day daily diary study in a sample of 47 working parents of special needs children during fall 2020, we observed family challenges to deplete positive affect from day-to-day, which undermined satisfaction with work–life balance. Furthermore, detrimental influences of daily family and work challenges on positive affect were magnified under chronic job stress, yielding diminished WLB satisfaction for more chronically stressed employees. We discuss how these findings can be harnessed to support particularly vulnerable employees during the COVID-19 pandemic and other chronic stress circumstances, while also drawing attention to how the pandemic may be exacerbating work–life inequities that some employees face.
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    Why is Fido Stressed? Crossover of Employees’ Job Stress to their Pets
    Mitropoulos, Tanya (Virginia Tech, 2024-08-07)
    Job stress is an epidemic in the United States, with well-being consequences for the employee, their spouse, and their children. Pets, who most Americans view as family members, may also be susceptible to this crossover effect, or the transference of work-related stress and strains from an employee to their loved ones. Given prior support for cats and dogs’ abilities to perceive, interpret, and absorb a human’s emotions via emotional contagion, I expected that pet dogs and cats of owners with higher job stress would themselves be more stressed. I anticipated that work-related rumination, or the tendency to continue thinking about work during leisure time, would explain this relationship. All variables were measured using self-report scales administered in an online survey, and pets’ stress was captured in two ways: as owner-perceived pet stress and as behaviorally indicated pet stress via separate measures for cats and dogs created for this study. The sample included 107 employees, together owning 85 dogs and 22 cats. Controlling for home stress, I found that job stress related to behaviorally indicated stress in dogs but not cats. Work-related rumination explained this relationship. This study unites organizational research with companion animal welfare and pinpoints a potential contributor to impaired canine welfare. This study also supports the presence of crossover and emotional contagion in the dog-owner bond. Employed dog owners should take care to avoid ruminating about work-related issues when at home to protect the well-being of man’s best friend.