In the 20th century employment is as necessary as food and shelter. The women folks are not exempt. I'm not talking of people who need to work to put food in the plates of their family. I'm talking of even upper middle class people. People who leave their jobs to rear children, recession, taking a break due to health issues...a lot of people face short term or long term unemployment and it's not just an economic disadvantage. It's a psychological disadvantage. I knew that a job is a major reason for one's self esteem, social identity and it kept us occupied and helped us from negativity induced by wandering minds.
But what I read yday truly made me sit up and think.
Marie Jahoda did a lot of work on unemployment.
http://www.pursuit-of-happiness.org/history-of-happiness/marie-jahoda/
Her point is:
She identified 5 characteristics of healthy people: they are able to manage time well, they have meaningful social relationships, they are able to work effectively with other people, they have high self-esteem, and are regularly active. In her landmark studies on the psychology of unemployment, she found that unemployed people are “unhappy” largely because they do not have many of these qualities (and not simply because they are poor). Needless to say, many contemporary positive psychologists have confirmed some of the essentials of her research, especially the importance of meaningful work and close social relationships in achieving subjective and psychological well-being.
Another beautiful article demonstrates too many side effects of unemployment, percolating to the family too!.
http://www.jobsletter.org.nz/jbl02410.htm
It is one of the major achievements of recent research to have demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that unemployment causes, rather than merely results from, poor psychological health
Anxiety, depression, dissatisfaction with one's present life, experienced strain, negative self-esteem, hopelessness regarding the future and other negative emotional states ... have each been demonstrated in cross-sectional studies to be higher in unemployed people than in matched groups of employed people.
There is also an emerging consensus that the physical, as well as mental health of unemployed people is also generally lower than that of employed people.
According to Jahoda: " employment makes the following categories of experience inevitable : it imposes a time structure on the waking day; it compels contacts and shared experiences with others outside the nuclear family; it demonstrates that there are goals and purposes which are beyond the scope of an individual but require a collectivity; it imposes status and social identity through the division of labour in modern employment; it enforces activity..."
Crucially, unemployment is said by Jahoda to damage mental health because of the psychological deprivation of these unintended consequences of employment which normally function as psychological supports. (This is what was wow.. a job provides psychological cushioning).
McLoyd in 1989 concluded, after an extensive literature review, that children with unemployed fathers are at risk of `socio-emotional problems, deviant behaviour, and reduced aspirations and expectations. The child may also model the somatic complaints of the father...'. McLoyd cites specific evidence regarding: mental health problems, withdrawal from peers, depression, loneliness, emotional sensitivity, distrustfulness, decreased sociability and low self-esteem.
Research by McKee and Bell in 1986 points to the difficulties spouses, generally female partners of unemployed men, face in trying to manage on reduced income, to cope with the spouses' intrusive presence in the household, to support distressed partners and deal with intra-family conflict.
The researcher Fineman in 1987 followed up a previously unemployed sample of people and found those re-employed in jobs which they felt were inadequate were experiencing more stress, and even poorer self-esteem, than they had during their period of unemployment. Half of Fineman's re-employed informants had what he described as `legacy' effects, whatever the quality of the new job. This legacy took of feeling there was a lasting blemish or stigma on their work record, of continuing doubts about their abilities, of personal failure. Organisationally they were prepared to give less of themselves to their new jobs.
But what I read yday truly made me sit up and think.
Marie Jahoda did a lot of work on unemployment.
http://www.pursuit-of-happiness.org/history-of-happiness/marie-jahoda/
Her point is:
She identified 5 characteristics of healthy people: they are able to manage time well, they have meaningful social relationships, they are able to work effectively with other people, they have high self-esteem, and are regularly active. In her landmark studies on the psychology of unemployment, she found that unemployed people are “unhappy” largely because they do not have many of these qualities (and not simply because they are poor). Needless to say, many contemporary positive psychologists have confirmed some of the essentials of her research, especially the importance of meaningful work and close social relationships in achieving subjective and psychological well-being.
Another beautiful article demonstrates too many side effects of unemployment, percolating to the family too!.
http://www.jobsletter.org.nz/jbl02410.htm
It is one of the major achievements of recent research to have demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that unemployment causes, rather than merely results from, poor psychological health
Anxiety, depression, dissatisfaction with one's present life, experienced strain, negative self-esteem, hopelessness regarding the future and other negative emotional states ... have each been demonstrated in cross-sectional studies to be higher in unemployed people than in matched groups of employed people.
There is also an emerging consensus that the physical, as well as mental health of unemployed people is also generally lower than that of employed people.
According to Jahoda: " employment makes the following categories of experience inevitable : it imposes a time structure on the waking day; it compels contacts and shared experiences with others outside the nuclear family; it demonstrates that there are goals and purposes which are beyond the scope of an individual but require a collectivity; it imposes status and social identity through the division of labour in modern employment; it enforces activity..."
Crucially, unemployment is said by Jahoda to damage mental health because of the psychological deprivation of these unintended consequences of employment which normally function as psychological supports. (This is what was wow.. a job provides psychological cushioning).
McLoyd in 1989 concluded, after an extensive literature review, that children with unemployed fathers are at risk of `socio-emotional problems, deviant behaviour, and reduced aspirations and expectations. The child may also model the somatic complaints of the father...'. McLoyd cites specific evidence regarding: mental health problems, withdrawal from peers, depression, loneliness, emotional sensitivity, distrustfulness, decreased sociability and low self-esteem.
Research by McKee and Bell in 1986 points to the difficulties spouses, generally female partners of unemployed men, face in trying to manage on reduced income, to cope with the spouses' intrusive presence in the household, to support distressed partners and deal with intra-family conflict.
The researcher Fineman in 1987 followed up a previously unemployed sample of people and found those re-employed in jobs which they felt were inadequate were experiencing more stress, and even poorer self-esteem, than they had during their period of unemployment. Half of Fineman's re-employed informants had what he described as `legacy' effects, whatever the quality of the new job. This legacy took of feeling there was a lasting blemish or stigma on their work record, of continuing doubts about their abilities, of personal failure. Organisationally they were prepared to give less of themselves to their new jobs.
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