Journal Article

The role conflict-burnout-depression link among Chinese female health care and social service providers: the moderating effect of marriage and motherhood

Chen, Anna, Zheng, Guanghuai, Lyu, Xinshu, Pan, Li

2022

Overview

Background Women with depression disorder outnumber men, and health care and social service providers are mostly female. Drawing on conservation of resources (COR) theory, this study aims to examine the association between role conflicts and depression among health care and social service providers, and further investigate the mediating effect of burnout, as well as the moderating effect of marital status and motherhood. Methods The data come from the baseline of the ‘China Social Work Longitudinal Study’ conducted in 2019, which contains 1,219 female social workers who reported work-family conflict. The five items of the scale in our model were extracted from the existing literature to ensure the construct validity of potential variables, and confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) were also conducted to ensure the validity and reliability of the scale. Descriptive analyses and correlation analyses were performed with SPSS 24, while the path analysis was conducted using Amos 24. The moderating effects of marital status and motherhood were further tested using multiple-group analyses. Results Female health care and social service providers experienced a high level of depression. Work-to-family conflict (WFC), family-to-work conflict (FWC), and organizational role conflict (ORC) were significantly and positively associated with female social workers’ depression. Exhaustion and cynicism fully mediated the effects of ORC on depression and partially mediated the effects of WFC on depression. In addition, FWC had only a direct effect on depression. A multiple-group analysis further indicated that both marital status and motherhood status may have played a moderating role in the conflict-burnout-depression link and that being unmarried and having no child were risk factors for depression in female health care and social service providers. Conclusions Marriage and motherhood have both negative and positive effects on the depression of female health care and social service providers. This suggests that marriage and motherhood may act as a form of “family clientelism” for female health care and social service providers who marry and have children.

• Publisher: BioMed Central,BioMed Central Ltd,Springer Nature B.V,BMC
• Subject: Biostatistics / Burn out (Psychology) / Burnout / Burnout, Professional - epidemiology / Child / Child & adolescent mental health / Children / China - epidemiology / Clientelism / Confirmatory factor analysis / Conservation / Correlation analysis / Cross-Sectional Studies / Culture / Cynicism / Delivery of Health Care / Demographic aspects / Depression / Depression, Mental / Environmental Health / Epidemiology / Exhaustion / Factor analysis / Families & family life / Family Conflict / Family roles / Family work relationship / Fatigue / Female / Female employees / Female roles / Females / Feminism / Gender / Group psychotherapy / Health aspects / Health care / Health care and social service providers / Health services / Humans / Influence / Longitudinal Studies / Male / Marital status / Marriage / Measures / Medical personnel / Medicine / Medicine & Public Health / Mental depression / Mental disorders / Mental health / Motherhood / Mothers / Neoliberalism / Organizational role conflict / Path analysis / Personal relationships / Psychological aspects / Public Health / Reliability / Reliability analysis / Reliability aspects / Reproducibility of Results / Resource conservation / Risk analysis / Risk factors / Role conflict / Roles / Social services / Social Work / Social workers / Statistical analysis / Stress / Surveys and Questionnaires / Vaccine / Variables / Women / Work / Work life balance / Work organization / Work-family conflict / Working women