A new study by BGU researchers has looked at job and couple burnout rates in a cross cultural comparison between Americans and Israelis. The importance of both work and marriage for healthy functioning has been well documented empirically.
In a paper just published in Social Psychology Quarterly, Dean of the Guilford Glazer Faculty of Business and Management Prof. Ayala Malach Pines and her colleagues, Profs. Leslie B. Hammer and Margaret B. Neal of Portland State University and Tamar Icekson, a doctoral student at BGU, extend the research by examining the relationship between job burnout and the little studied phenomenon of couple burnout, in a fast growing group of working couples in the "sandwiched generation," that is, couples who care for both children and aging parents.
In the study, representative samples of Israeli and American sandwiched couples responded to a questionnaire that included measures of job burnout, couple burnout, and accounts of the stressors and rewards associated with work, marriage, parenting, and caring for aging parents.
Findings revealed significant differences in burnout type (job burnout was higher than couple burnout); gender (wives were more burned out than husbands); and country (Americans were more burned out than Israelis). They also documented the role of job-related stressors and rewards as well as caring for parents as predictors of job burnout, and the role of marital stressors and rewards as predictors of couple burnout.
In addition spillover between job burnout and couple burnout was revealed (the higher a husband’s or wife’s job stressors, the higher was his or her couple burnout; the higher a husband’s or a wife’s marital stress and the more marital stressors, the higher was his or her job burnout. And the analyses revealed significant crossover effects between the spouses (the higher a husband’s or wife’s work stressors, the higher the spouse’s job burnout).
The most surprising finding, however, were the low levels of both job and couple burnout among the sandwiched couples when compared to the general population.
Focus groups, in which couples described the major causes of their burnout and the things that helped them cope, conducted as part of the study helped explain this surprising finding. One theme that came up in each of the focus groups was the stress involved in caring for aging parents: "The most difficult is that my parents are growing old…They were always there for me…It's difficult to see the regression, the beginning of insecurity. This is the hardest."
Reaching midlife and caring for aging parents brought up existential issues for the couples: “I arrived at an age that I define as midlife. I am 49, and I think that the difficulty with parents is that you are at the point, how to say it…that the best part is behind us…and the future that awaits us, especially when you look at parents, well, it's not too heartening…When you see this insulting old age, it is actually very difficult.”
Couples’ caring for aging parents together has had a positive effect on their marriage and therefore reduced couple burnout: “I think that it strengthens the marriage when both partners support each other and go to visit the parents together…It gives me a good feeling when I go with my wife to visit her parents, and she feels good when she comes with me to visit my parents.”
The study was funded by the U.S.-Israel Binational Science Foundation (BSF).