Peeking under the Hood of Job Stress: How Men and Women’s Stress Levels Vary by Typologies of Job Quality and Family Composition

Abstract

Changes to work and family norms and polices over the last several decades have reshaped both the job quality and the nature of job and family formation in the United States. Neoliberal policies have generated a slew of flexible but precarious working conditions; labor force participation is now the modal path for all genders regardless of parental or marital status. Leveraging data on 3,419 working men and women from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, I use granular measures of job quality to identify distinct job quality–family typologies among both men and women in early adulthood to midadulthood to examine differential implications for psychological and physiological stress. I find four types among men and three among women. Family formation and job prestige appear to differentiate stressful from nonstressful jobs for men; stress outcomes for women are more complex, with job characteristics such as flexibility playing a greater role.