The Impact of Childhood Psychological Maltreatment on Work-Family Conflict in Adulthood
We analyzed publicly available self-report data from Wave IV of The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) to examine how the experience of childhood psychological maltreatment impacts work-family conflict throughout adulthood. We chose to look at psychological maltreatment because it is a commonly reported form of trauma that can impede a child?s ability to develop both personal resources, such as mastery and perceived constraint, as well as social resources such as spousal support, that help an individual successfully manage work and family roles. While the results of our path analysis to test the indirect effect of psychological maltreatment on work-family conflict through mastery, perceived constraint, and spousal support were not significant, we did find significant negative associations between childhood psychological maltreatment and mastery and spouse support, and significant positive associations between childhood psychological maltreatment and perceived constraint and family-to-work conflict. Altogether, our findings indicate the childhood psychological maltreatment is associated with the availability of personal and social resources that are imperative for managing work and family roles, as well as family-to-work conflict itself.