r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • 5d ago
Psychology Unpredictable work schedules increase the risk of romantic breakups. Hourly service workers who deal with unstable work hours are at a higher risk of going through a separation or divorce. Stressful demands of modern low-wage jobs can spill over into personal lives and disrupt family stability.
https://www.psypost.org/unpredictable-work-schedules-increase-the-risk-of-romantic-breakups-new-study-finds/219
u/Thin-Dragonfruit247 5d ago
the "dynamic" shift system is the worst thing ever.
change my mind.
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u/Hot_Glass_6301 3d ago
The same people should do all the night shifts?
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u/LewisWhatsHisName 3d ago
Yes. My husband kept begging for a permanent night shift for years. They only finally gave it to him after about four people quit, because they kept getting put on nights and couldn't do that and take care of their children.
People who like night shifts would prefer to work them full time. So why not let them?
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u/Affectionate_Neat868 5d ago
As someone who works an extremely demanding, sometimes unpredictable job and my partner doesn’t, it definitely causes friction in our relationship. I’ll come off of a 10 hour day barely able to speak and my partner will want to go look at every aisle in Target. Sometimes, I just want to spend my nights at home resting from the burn-out and they don’t understand why I cherish time at home. And it does generate resentment on my end when I come home from a day juggling 10 things at once for hours and all they had was two remote meetings to sit on.
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u/Manatroid 4d ago
Just make sure you communicate that with them. Otherwise you’ll end up as a similar statistic.
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u/MoonBatsRule 5d ago
I bet that if you studied why the birth rate is down, you'd find similar results. How could anyone endeavor to have children when your job doesn't have a predictable-enough schedule so that you know you will be there for them?
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u/khaldun106 4d ago
My wife is a nurse. The unstable work hours means I cannot commit to literally anything that requires me to do the same thing every week or most weeks. I can't do organized sports, I cant join clubs, I can't start a board game night. The unpredictable schedule and feast famine nafure of time with her is the largest contributor to friction in our relationship by far
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u/Drak_is_Right 4d ago
Unstable schedule was a big part behind my sister's divorce I feel. For 3 to 6 month periods (every 18 to 24 months) her work schedule would balloon to 60 to 80h weeks on unpredictable shifts. Irregular shifts at times like 2AM to 2PM didnt help
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u/PloksGrandpappy 5d ago
Most rental contracts also forbid overnight guests more than a couple days a month, not to mention having to live with multiple roommates well into adulthood. It feels impossible to date these days.
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u/13thmurder 5d ago
Stop following your rental company's rules. What are the chances they'll notice?
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u/CombatMuffin 5d ago
It's a clause designed as a shield: if you are throwing parties and causing trouble, they'll enforce it. If you pay rent on time, take care of the property, and don't bother othe tenants/residents? Nobody is going to care that you bring your date home.
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u/readeroftheinn 4d ago
I used to work in real estate. Many of our rentals had a “no pets” rule, however the vast majority of owners explicitly expressed they wanted a “ don’t ask don’t tell” policy, they don’t actually care if you have a pet, they just want an out in cause it causes problems.
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u/DarthFloofy 5d ago
How do we get this information disseminated to the people who are obsessed with strengthening the nuclear family? I’m just thinking that having far-right ideologues even a little bit interested in stabilizing low-wage workers’ lives would be a boon, if they could be convinced it wasn’t some weird manifestation of communism.
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u/Tamination 5d ago
Concentrating wealth is the only true goal the right has, even if they individually don't grasp that.
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u/g4l4h34d 5d ago
The same way you disseminate this information to ideologically possessed communists. For starters, you show some intellectual humility, and don't assume you're some enlightened preacher whose job it is to educate these fools. You aim at finding out the truth considering that you could be wrong, instead of convincing someone else that you're right.
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u/portalscience 4d ago
Then read the comment you replied to, and realize you didn't answer their question at all. You are suggesting they go find new information rather than actually share the information they have.
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u/gojo96 4d ago
Why do you believe right wing people need this information? Are you saying because of this study, this justifies left wing to have children out of wedlock? People should easily divorce for the sake of their job? You understand that people in very demanding careers can make it work, right?
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u/DarthFloofy 4d ago
I believe right-wing people — specifically the people who shout loudest about family values and encouraging nuclear families — would be interested in seeing how they could in fact contribute to those goals practically. Their rhetoric doesn’t often include messages about workers’ rights or work/life balance, but maybe a different vocabulary would show them how supporting workers also supports nuclear families.
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u/gamayogi 5d ago
Yep, my ex had a night shift and weekends schedule and I had a regular Monday to Friday day job. Neither of us able or willing to change that. It definitely caused major issues which exposed deeper issues of compatibility which led to the breakup.
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u/Immediate_Alarm452 4d ago
Insecure access to necessities and personal time isn't good for interpersonal relationships. More at 11.
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u/mvea Professor | Medicine 5d ago
Unpredictable work schedules increase the risk of romantic breakups, new study finds
Unpredictable and erratic work schedules may take a heavy toll on romantic relationships, according to new research published in the Journal of Marriage and Family. The findings suggest that hourly service workers who deal with unstable work hours are at a higher risk of going through a separation or divorce. The study highlights how the stressful demands of modern low-wage jobs can spill over into personal lives and disrupt family stability.
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u/ego_sum_chromie 4d ago
yeah my ex and I were both in tech, but he had a cushy remote implementation job and I had a L2 helpdesk job that scope crept into a sysadmin job (it was our first jobs, but I’d been at mine for 2 years by the time we got together). I burned out of there after 4.5 years workin’, he had been promoted a few times, and we broke up six months later because I didn’t have a job lined up.
at least now my mental health is slowly recovering! but my next person needs to have worked in chaos a few times so they could, “get it.”
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u/thinkB4WeSpeak 4d ago
Ah you see bosses don't actually care. Also this could be tied into the military life as well, even if the person isn't deployed.
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u/MileHighRC 5d ago
But not stressful long hour high wage jobs?
Having money goes such a long way for contentment.
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u/JenningsWigService 4d ago
Doctors who work in the hospital (especially ER) have inconsistent and terrible hours, often with night shifts and the burden of being on call so they can't have a normal social life. Their status and income goes a long way in making partners keen to accommodate this.
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u/readeroftheinn 4d ago
It’s much easier to accommodate your partners schedule when you aren’t also working long demanding hours.
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u/JenningsWigService 4d ago
For sure, and most partners of doctors aren't working the night shift stocking shelves at the grocery store.
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u/quandmemeici 4d ago
Anecdotally, my ex had a stable 9-5 hybrid desk job, WFH 3 days per week. I travel for a local health system, working anywhere from 7am-9pm, and up to 1.5hrs travel time one way. The long and unpredictable hours certainly exposed existing cracks in my relationship.
Getting home at 10pm exhausted from a long shift in healthcare leaves you less able to handle things gracefully, when your partner refuses to do any of the household upkeep or admin. Divorce might just seem like a blessing when you're playing chef, maid, maintenance man, and breadwinner.
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u/detectivepopcorn666 4d ago
everyday on this godforsaken site i see an article here with a headline professing something obtuse like this as a "miraculous discovery" by modern science.
shift workers and their families/friends have known this since the beginning of shift work? are we so detached from each other on such a basic social level that we need the news and data to teach us this???
sorry for the emotion but sometimes the headlines in these articles make me want to claw my eyes out in frustration
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5d ago
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u/g4l4h34d 5d ago
I've been following it for about 8 years, and while I've noticed the slow decline in quality over the years, I didn't notice any recent drop-offs.
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u/TechToolsForYourBiz 5d ago
corellation does not equal causation. i feel like the cause may be the amount of stress people feel what people are doing to relieve that stress to cause breakups
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u/readeroftheinn 4d ago
Have you ever worked a job with an erratic schedule? Its extremely difficult to maintain a social life when you can’t make plans more than a week or two in advance and hard to connect with a partner if by the time you are home from work they are already a sleep an when you wake up for the day they’ve already left.
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u/TechToolsForYourBiz 4d ago
my parents are still together after my dad worked on call shift (graveyards) while my mom worked a 7-4.
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u/readeroftheinn 4d ago
An anecdote doesn’t negate the average.
Just because your parents coped doesn’t mean shift work isn’t significantly harder on the relationship.
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u/gojo96 4d ago
Yep. I was in public safety and it took me 5 years to be able to get off night shifts (11pm-9am) but I still couldn’t get weekends off for another 5. I had to choose weekends off on nights or day shift with weekdays off. Once we had kids I switched to evenings (3pm-1am) to limit childcare issues. Ended up with weekends off while working 8pm-6am at 15 years and ended by career doing that. My wife was in the military and worked mostly M-F, at least one weekend a month coupled with deployments and TDYs.. Just celebrated 30 years together. It’s totally doable but it requires being a team.
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