Positive and negative work reflection, engagement and exhaustion in dual-earner couples: Exploring living with children and work-linkage as moderators

Many employees think about their work during off-job time. Scholars have suggested that whether work-related thoughts during off-job time have detrimental or beneficial effects on employees’ well-being and performance depends on the nature of these thoughts. In this study with dual-earner couples we examined whether employees’ positive and negative work reflection during off-job time are associated with their own and with their partners’ work engagement and exhaustion. Furthermore, we investigated whether (a) living with children and (b) being work-linked (i.e. working in the same organisation and/or working in the same profession) moderated these relations. Both partners of 130 German het…