Interactive effects of employed parents' affect spin with job demands and resources on adolescent well-being

Abstract

Integrating affect spin research with work–family literature, we build and test a model demonstrating the relationship between parents' affect spin and adolescent well-being (depression, delinquency, and popularity) as explained by adolescent affect spin; parents' job demands and resources are boundary conditions. Using multisource data of mother–father-adolescent triads of 127 families (total N = 417) in the 500 Family Study—including over 13,700 experience-sampling measures of affective states and objective job data from Occupational Information Network (O*NET), we find mothers', but not fathers', affect spin has a direct positive relationship with adolescent affect spin that, in turn, relates to adolescents' poorer well-being. Further, mothers' affect spin has a stronger indirect effect on adolescent well-being when mothers' jobs involve more irregular work schedules, whereas fathers' affect spin has a stronger effect when their jobs involve higher conflictual contact. In contrast, both mothers' and fathers' affect spin have weaker effects on adolescents when their jobs involve higher decision latitude. Our findings converge to suggest job demands exacerbate and job resources attenuate the deleterious role of parents' affect spin on adolescent well-being. Supplemental analyses demonstrate how the social learning process provides a theoretical explanation for the relationship between parents' and adolescents' affect spin.