Navigating work-to-family boundaries: Day-level reciprocal effects between guilt and boundary management

Work-induced guilt toward one's family (i.e., work-to-family guilt) is a central challenge for working parents managing work-to-family boundaries. Whereas prior research has primarily focused on between-person differences, stable determinants, and static perspectives, our study investigates how daily work-to-family guilt both results from and shapes fluctuations in work-to-family boundaries. Drawing on boundary theory and cognitive dissonance theory, we examine how daily enacted work-to-family segmentation (i.e., the extent to which individuals keep work out of family) reduces daily work-to-family guilt, and whether this effect depends on daily preferences for work-to-family segmentation. We further test whether daily work-to-family guilt predicts next-day preferred and enacted work-to-family segmentation. In a 2-week experience sampling study (Level-1 N = 620, Level-2 N = 129), working parents completed morning surveys assessing preferred work-to-family segmentation and evening surveys assessing enacted work-to-family segmentation and work-to-family guilt. Multilevel path analyses revealed that enacted work-to-family segmentation was negatively related to same-day work-to-family guilt. This association was stronger on days when working parents preferred greater work-to-family segmentation. Moreover, work-to-family guilt was positively related to next-day preferred work-to-family segmentation, but not to next-day enacted work-to-family segmentation. By demonstrating that work-to-family guilt functions both as an emotional outcome of daily boundary management and as a trigger for next-day adjustments in boundary preferences, this study reveals a reciprocal regulatory process through which working parents experience and respond to work-induced guilt toward their family. • Keeping work out of the family domain reduces daily guilt among parents • This effect is stronger on days when parents desire greater separation • Daily guilt increases parents' desire for greater separation the following day • Daily guilt does not influence how much separation parents enact the following day • Our findings show that daily guilt both reflects and motivates boundary management