Work-Family Stress and Altruism at Home

The Roles of Psychological Capital and Social Support

Abstract

Through a lens of organizational psychology this paper discusses the nature of altruism at home in the context of work and family stressors.  Altruism in the care of the home is characterized by self-giving out of love, creating a nurturing environment for the flourishing of family members.  This implies on-going acts of generous behavior in service of the closest family members.  We propose that this form of sustained altruism may be challenged by the stressors stemming from work-family conflict.  This paper proposes that the individual resource of psychological capital and the external resource of social support can serve to enable the individual to continue their desired altruistic behaviors amid the stress of work-family conflict.