Boundary Management: A Time-Sampling Study on Managing Work and Private Life in Middle Adulthood

Abstract

How do middle-age adults in the “rush hour of life” manage the demands of pursuing multiple goals in different life domains? A 20-day measurement burst study (N = 89 employed adults, M_age = 42) investigated the occurrence and consequences of integration and incongruity of work, family, and leisure in the everyday lives of middle-age adults. Results suggest that subjective well-being and goal relations (lower conflict, higher facilitation among goals) profit from an integration of multiple life domains. In contrast, incongruity between content (activities, thoughts) and context (location) seems to be detrimental for subjective-well being and goal relations of middle-age adults.

FUNDING

This research was supported by the National Centre of Competence in Research “LIVES – Overcoming Vulnerability: Life Course Perspectives,” which is financed by the Swiss National Science Foundation, and by a grant awarded to Michaela Knecht by the Suzanne and Hans Biäsch Foundation for Applied Psychology (2011-13).

Notes

¹ To check if the instances of incongruity might be due to only few participants in the sample, we inspected the frequency distribution of incongruity across participants. Only one participant reported no instance of incongruity at all. Two other participants reported no instance of incongruity between activity and location.

² Only one participant reported no instance of integration at all. This was not the same participant who did not report any instance of incongruity. All other participants reported some instances of both kinds of integration.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the National Centre of Competence in Research “LIVES – Overcoming Vulnerability: Life Course Perspectives,” which is financed by the Swiss National Science Foundation, and by a grant awarded to Michaela Knecht by the Suzanne and Hans Biäsch Foundation for Applied Psychology (2011-13).