Work incivility follows you home
DO you behave rudely with your employees? Besides leading to low performance, high levels of stress and impaired attention, incivility at work is also likely to negatively affect workers’ parenting skills and behaviour towards their children, says a study.
Workplace incivility is any behaviour that is rude, disrespectful, impolite or otherwise violates workplace norms of respect. This behaviour shows a lack of concern for others.
Some examples of workplace incivility include ignoring or making derogatory remarks about someone, taking credit for the work of others, passing blame for your own mistakes, avoiding someone or shutting people out of a network or team.
The study showed that women who experience incivility in the workplace are more likely to engage in stricter, more authoritarian parenting practices that can have a negative impact on their children.
Authoritarian parents have high expectations of their children, with rules that they expect their children to follow unconditionally.
At the same time, though, they provide very little in the way of feedback or nurturing and harshly punish any mistakes, said Kathryne Dupre, PhD, of Carleton University in Canada.
Incivility in the workplace was also found to be associated with mothers feeling less effective as parents, which could help explain the increased need to engage in strict, controlling parenting behaviours.
“Authoritarian styles of parenting have been associated with a variety of negative child outcomes, including obedience and success with love, exhibiting aggressive behaviour outside the home, being fearful or overly shy around others, having difficulty in social situations, suffering from depression and anxiety, and struggling with selfcontrol,” Dupre said.
For the study, presented at the annual convention of the American Psychological Association in California, the team conducted an online survey of 146 working mothers and their spouses. Unlike extreme acts of aggression and violence, the negative effects of workplace incivility were generally considered to be low-intensity deviant behaviours. “Our findings suggest that this low-intensity behaviour can actually erode one’s sense of parental competence, and as a result, may also be harming one’s children in a vicarious way,” explained Angela Dionisi, from the varsity.