Drinking to cope mediates the link between work-family conflict and alcohol use among mothers but not fathers of preschool children

Highlights

• Coping motives mediate the effect of work-family conflict on alcohol use in mothers.

• Among fathers, no such effect was found due to no conflicts-drinking link.

• Prevention efforts including stress relaxation need to support coping drinking women.

Abstract

Based on the assumptions of emotion regulation theory, this study tests whether drinking to cope mediates the association between work-family conflict (WFC) and alcohol use; an important link missing in previous studies. Based on a sample of 144 fathers and 165 mothers of pre-schoolers in Switzerland, Poisson regression mediation models were estimated. Models were adjusted for other drinking motives, age, and employment level. The results revealed that, among mothers, coping motives fully mediated the effect of WFC on frequency of risky single occasion drinking (IRR direct effect = 0.969, p > .05; IRR indirect effect = 1.043, p < .05) and partially mediated the link between WFC and usual quantity per drinking day (IRR direct effect = 1.181, p < .01; IRR indirect effect = 1.035, p < .05). Among fathers, no effect of WFC on alcohol use was found and consequently no mediation of coping motives. The findings suggest that mothers who drink to cope are at risk of excessive drinking, particularly when experiencing WFC. This puts them at risk for long-term health consequences when the stress and negative affects resulting from WFC are not adequately addressed. Intervention efforts should focus on women who drink for coping motives by providing them with support and non-drinking alternatives.

Introduction

Combining the demands arising from the care for small children with those related to job obligations and associated workloads is not easy (TEMPLE et al., 1991, Darrow et al., 1992). For example, the need to work overtime due to strict deadlines while having to take care of a sick child at home, place competing demands on an individual. These clashing demands are particularly prominent among parents of preschool children. For example, a mother may face the difficulties arising from returning to work after maternity leave, relying on childcare with set opening hours that rarely provide the flexibility to accommodate over time work and also having to deal with frequent childhood illnesses. Conflicts arising from such clashes between work and family demands have been found to be linked with alcohol use (Frone et al., 1997, Roos et al., 2006, Wolff et al., 2013, Wang et al., 2010). Nevertheless, the underlying mechanisms behind these association remain poorly understood. This study examines whether coping motives mediate the link between work-family conflicts (WFC) and alcohol use among mothers and fathers of young children.

Previous studies have revealed that employees with higher levels of WFC, such as not being able to fulfil family tasks due to work-related obligations or vice versa, report higher stress levels and tend to drink more often and higher amounts than those with role arrangements less prone to conflict (Frone, 2000, Frone et al., 1996). Authors argue that the link between stress and alcohol use can be explained by the assumptions of the emotion regulation theory (Lang et al., 1999). This theory posits that alcohol is used for tension reduction (Cappell & Greeley, 1987) or to alleviate negative emotions (e.g. Malouff et al., 2007); both aspects which are likely to be present when facing WFC. Thus, when facing WFC, high level drinking should only occur among those who drink to cope with the tensions (e.g., stress, time pressure etc.) and negative emotions (e.g., feeling exhausted, down, and depressed) WFC brings. Therefore, when faced with WFC, those who deal with it in other ways, that do not include drinking to cope, will not increase their alcohol consumption beyond usual levels. Thus, coping motives should mediate the link between WFC and alcohol use, such that WFC is linked to the frequency of using alcohol to cope with tensions and negative emotions and this, in turn, is linked to higher amounts of alcohol being consumed. This implies that WFC is indirectly related to high alcohol consumption (via coping drinking) but that there is not a direct link. However, we failed to find any existing studies providing evidence to support this.

This gap in research is surprising because drinking motives in general are defined as the final decision whether to drink or not to drink and therefore are assumed to be the most proximal factor for engaging in drinking (Kuntsche et al., 2005). The Motivational Model of Alcohol Use (Cox and Klinger, 1988, Cox and Klinger, 1990) assumes that drinking motives constitute a final pathway to alcohol use, i.e., the gateway through which more distal influences are mediated. In the last two decades, a wealth of studies have empirically demonstrated this mediation for all kinds of precursors (such as genetic disposition, personality factors, and cultural aspects), drinking motives and alcohol-related outcomes (e.g. Kuntsche et al., 2015, Cooper et al., 2016).

More specifically and in line with the assumptions of the emotion regulation theory (Lang et al., 1999), drinking to cope has been found to mediate the relationship between depressed mood and problematic drinking (Bravo et al., 2018, Kenney et al., 2018) and between sexual coercion/assault and problematic drinking (Fossos et al., 2011, Lindgren et al., 2012). However, a full mediation of the latter relationship was only found among women. Among young adult couples, coping motives also mediated the association between partnership conflicts and problematic drinking, but again this was the case only for women (Lambe et al., 2015, Lindgren et al., 2012). It has been argued that male drinking behaviour may be less motivated by coping motives than females (Fossos et al., 2011), as men are more affected by social company and situational factors when drinking (Koordeman et al., 2011, Thrul and Kuntsche, 2015), suggesting a gendered approach when considering coping motives. However, to the best of our knowledge, nothing is known about WFC, the link of WFC to drinking motives and whether the latter mediates the WFC-alcohol use relationship.

Thus, in a first step, this study will examine the link between WFC and drinking motives since the presence of this link is a necessary requirement for testing the mediation of the association between WFC and alcohol use. In a second step, the mediating effect of drinking motives on the link between WFC and alcohol use will be tested among employed mothers and fathers of three to six-year olds. Following the assumptions of the emotion regulation theory, we expect to find a mediating effect of coping motives on both alcohol measures. However, as early research (Lambe et al., 2015, Fossos et al., 2011) suggests mediation may vary for the two genders, stratifying analyses by gender will enable comparison with previous WFC studies (e.g. Leineweber et al., 2013, Koura et al., 2017).

As this kind of drinking pattern is likely to change from early adulthood to later life (Kuntsche and Gmel, 2013, Gmel et al., 2011), and due to the high inter-correlation between different kind of drinking motives (Gmel et al., 2012, KUNTSCHE et al., 2005), the analyses will be adjusted for age and drinking motives other than coping, as well as the level of employment, as this may influence the occurrence of WFC in parents.