With a Little Help From Our Friends
“Women’s friendships are like a renewable source of power.”
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Hello friends! I have a few questions for you…
Did you know that you have access to an extraordinary resource?
One that often gets overlooked when we talk about work and family?
One that can help not only you but also your husband and maybe even your kids?
Any guesses?
Your friends.
Today’s post is another research spotlight. Recently, my colleagues and I published a paper entitled, “With a little help from my (her) friends: The role of friend support on the negative effects of work engagement for married couples.” Yeah, I know, that’s a long (and maybe a bit boring) title. But our findings are anything but boring.
Yet, before we get to that, let’s back up a bit…
When discussing ways to manage and cope with the demands from work and family, resources are the key ingredient. Time, energy, money – all of these are resources that help us meet the demands placed on us. If I had unlimited time, I’d be able to easily meet all the demands thrown at me. Similarly, unlimited energy would make it a lot easier. If I had unlimited money, well, I’d just pay someone to take care of those demands for me!
Unfortunately, our resources are not unlimited, and we’re faced with difficult decisions about how to best use them each day. That’s why I spend so much time on this blog teaching you how to live intentionally and use your resources on the things that matter most to you.
One resource that we haven’t talked about, and one that frankly hasn’t been paid much attention to in the management literature, is that of friend support.
Social support has been studied as a resource and even shown to be helpful in managing work and family demands. Yet, most research has focused on support originating at home (e.g., family or spouse support) or support originating at work (e.g., supervisor or coworker support). The interesting thing about friend support is that it exists outside of the work and family domains, making it a unique type of resource that we can tap into.
Because resources are so valuable, we are motivated to build up and protect our resources. One way that we do this in the workplace is by being highly engaged at work. This means we invest our resources of time and energy in hopes of accumulating other resources such as pay, promotion, or prestige. However, like I mentioned earlier our time and energy are finite resources, so investing them at work inevitably means that you don’t have as much to give at home. This situation, when work and family are incompatible, leads us to experience work-family conflict. I’ve talked about work-family conflict previously on this show, so if you want to dig deeper you can check it out here. Experiencing work-family conflict is not fun and it’s actually been linked to several undesirable consequences for employees and their families such as burnout, exhaustion, and stress.
This is where our friends step in; or as Jane Fonda puts it “our renewable source of power.”
In this study, we looked at how husbands’ and wives’ friend support helped reduce their experienced work-family conflict and ultimately protected them from depression and emotional exhaustion. Friends exist outside of the conflicting domains of work and family. They are impartial third parties. They have less stock in whether we invest time in work or family. And this is precisely what makes them so powerful.
Friend support can take on so many different forms. On a practical level, friends might offer to help watch our kids, literally taking a family demand away from us and giving us the gift of time and energy to devote to other demands. Friends might also provide emotional support such as being a sounding board when we’re working through issues or they could simply be our cheerleaders when we need encouragement.
You’re probably wondering what we found. Well, friend support did help reduce work-family conflict for both husbands and wives, indirectly reducing their depression and emotional exhaustion. This is great news because it highlights that friend support is in fact a valuable resource that we can turn to.
At this point you might be thinking to yourself, “That’s great, Kaylee, but didn’t we already know that. I mean you basically told us that at the beginning of the post.” And you’re right. BUT that’s not the most interesting part of this research study. You see, we also looked at how a wife’s friend support impacted her husband’s work-family conflict and vice versa.
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So, picture this…
Your husband is highly engaged at work, using up all his resources, which leaves him unable to fully meet his responsibilities at home. Those responsibilities are going to fall on you. Maybe he has to stay late at work, leaving dinner preparation, bathing, and bedtime routines, things he would normally help out with, up to you. Now, it would be really easy to feel angry, stressed, and overwhelmed in this situation, and trust me I have been there. But, based on our findings in this study, this is where our girlfriends can step in. Our friends can support us in these situations; essentially substituting for the resources that our husband would have otherwise provided. Say, for instance, that instead of giving into the overwhelm or simply leaving your husband’s unmet responsibilities for him when he gets home, you call up your friend, ask her to come over and hang out, and turn the evening into an enjoyable experience. By doing so, you are able to take care of all the family responsibilities and your husband is not bombarded with his family responsibilities when he gets home, reducing his work-family conflict.
And this is exactly what we find support for in this study. The crazy thing is that it only works for our friendships. Our friend support helps both us and our husbands. However, our husbands’ friend support only helps them.
So why might that be the case?
Well, in our paper we talk about how male and female friendships are different. For women, we are often more vulnerable in our relationships. Our friendships are typically more intimate, emotional, and restorative than men’s friendships. For example, we talk about our emotions with our friends, we don’t hesitate to ask for advice, and we are more willing to share our fears and doubts. Personally, I wouldn’t think twice before calling a girlfriend to come over and help me out but I have serious doubts about whether my husband would ever call one of his friends to come over and help with the kids. Further, men’s friendships tend to be more activity-centered, not focused on sharing their feelings and asking for support. If anything, those activities (e.g., golf, movie, sporting event) just add additional demands on his time.
So what do we do about it?
Well, first we need to be encouraged by the simple fact that our friendships are valuable resources. It’s easy to feel like we don’t have enough resources to do all the things we need to do. However, the fact that friends can play such an important role in juggling work and family means that our pool of available resources is a lot larger than we may have previously thought.
Second, seeing how valuable friend support can be, especially for women, we need to make a concerted effort to ensure that we have those high-quality friendships. When things feel crazy at home and work, like you’re barely keeping your head above water, it’s easy and even tempting to stop investing in our friendships. However, this study highlights the importance of female friendships and if anything, we should be pressing into our friendships in our time of need, not pulling away.
My advice? Go grab your girlfriend, buy her a cup of coffee, give her a big hug, and tell her how grateful you are for everything she’s done for you. And then… don’t be afraid to call her when you need her!
Speaking of the value of friendships, I’m looking for some friends to join me in a 5-Day Closet Clean Out Challenge where we'll be creating a closet that we love to open each morning.
What better way to transform our closets from overwhelming to organized than with accountability from like-minded women?
If you’re interested, sign-up at the link below.
I’d love to have you join us!
WANT TO CONNECT?
We spend a great deal of time at work. Like Annie Dillard once said, “How we spend our days is how we spend our lives.” I encourage you to look around your office and see what steps you can take to add simple luxuries to your workday because in the grand scheme of things, they will add up and lead to a luxurious life!