The Impact of Remote Work on Family Relations in Households with School-Age Children

Streszczenie

Praca poddaje analizie wpływ pracy zdalnej na relacje rodzinne w gospodarstwach domowych z dziećmi w wieku szkolnym. Celem badania jest ustalenie, w jaki sposób częstotliwość i czas trwania pracy zdalnej kształtują jakość interakcji rodzic–dziecko, satysfakcję partnerską oraz poziom konfliktu praca–rodzina. Podstawę teoretyczną stanowią: teoria granic praca–rodzina Clark, model Spillover-Crossover, ekologiczna teoria systemów Bronfenbrennera oraz teoria ról społecznych. Badanie empiryczne przeprowadzono na próbie 147 rodziców pracujących zdalnie w Polsce w latach 2023–2024, stosując kwestionariusz złożony z narzędzi WFBS, PCIQS, HCS i ECS oraz pytań otwartych.^{[15, s. 1548]} Wyniki wskazują, że częstotliwość pracy zdalnej dodatnio koreluje z jakością interakcji rodzic–dziecko (r=,27), całkowita praca zdalna obniża satysfakcję partnerską, a efekt ten jest mediowany przez konflikt ról (d=0,74).^{[16, s. 189]} Potwierdzono również, że czas trwania pracy zdalnej i płeć predykują poziom konfliktu praca–rodzina (β=,31; β=,22). Hipoteza dotycząca osiągnięć szkolnych dzieci nie została potwierdzona — odnotowano jedynie skromny efekt pozytywny, silniejszy w grupie wiekowej 7–12 lat.^{[17, s. 148]} Analiza jakościowa ujawniła zacieranie granic praca–dom (72,8% respondentów), wzrost poczucia bliskości (61,2%) oraz problemy z hałasem i rozproszeniem (53,7%). Sformułowane wnioski podkreślają warunkowy charakter wpływu pracy zdalnej na życie rodzinne — zależy on od modelu organizacyjnego, czasu trwania oraz specyfiki gospodarstwa domowego.

Słowa kluczowe: praca zdalna, relacje rodzinne, dzieci w wieku szkolnym, konflikt praca-rodzina, równowaga praca-życie

Abstract

The study examines the impact of remote work on family relations in households with school-age children. The aim of the research is to determine how the frequency and duration of remote work arrangements shape the quality of parent-child interaction, partnership satisfaction, and the level of work-family conflict. The theoretical framework draws on Clark's Work-Family Border Theory, the Spillover-Crossover Model, Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Systems Theory, and Role Theory. An empirical study was conducted on a purposive sample of 147 remote-working parents in Poland in 2023–2024, using a questionnaire comprising four standardised instruments (WFBS, PCIQS, HCS, ECS) supplemented by open-ended questions. The findings indicate that remote work frequency is positively correlated with parent-child interaction quality (r=.27), that full remote arrangements are associated with reduced partnership satisfaction mediated by role conflict (d=0.74), and that work-family conflict is predicted by both the duration of remote work (β=.31) and gender (β=.22). The hypothesis concerning children's academic performance was not confirmed; only a modest positive effect was identified, more pronounced among children aged 7–12. Qualitative analysis revealed work-home boundary blurring (72.8% of respondents), increased family togetherness (61.2%), and noise-related distraction (53.7%).^{[18, s. 87]} The conclusions emphasise that the effects of remote work on family relations are contingent on the type of arrangement, its duration, and household characteristics, with practical implications for employers, families, and social policy.

Keywords: remote work, family relations, school-age children, work-family conflict, work-life balance

List of Abbreviations

ECS: Emotional Climate Scale
EU: European Union
EWCS: European Working Conditions Survey
HCS: Household Conflict Scale
ICT: Information and Communication Technologies
ILO: International Labour Organization
LFS: Labour Force Survey
PCIQS: Parent-Child Interaction Quality Scale
SDQ: Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire
WFC: Work-Family Conflict
WFBS: Work-Family Balance Scale
WLB: Work-Life Balance

Introduction

The transformation of the workplace from a fixed, institutionally bounded location to a distributed, digitally mediated environment represents one of the most consequential shifts in the organisation of labour in the post-industrial era. Although remote work arrangements had been gradually diffusing across knowledge-intensive sectors throughout the first two decades of the twenty-first century, it was the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 that catalysed their adoption on an unprecedented scale. Across the European Union, the share of employees who worked from home at least part of the time surged from approximately eleven percent in 2019 to nearly forty-eight percent at the peak of pandemic-related restrictions, according to Eurofound estimates. In Poland, the transition was equally dramatic: enterprises across both the public and private sectors activated remote work provisions for large segments of their workforces within a matter of weeks, frequently without the logistical, spatial, or psychological preparation that a planned transition would ordinarily entail. What had previously been regarded as a niche arrangement, associated primarily with freelancers and highly autonomous professionals, became an ordinary feature of working life for millions of households. The sociological implications of this shift extend far beyond the organisation of production; they penetrate into the most intimate structures of everyday life, reshaping how families inhabit shared domestic space, how parents relate to their children, and how partners negotiate the competing demands of professional obligation and familial care.

The family, understood as the primary unit of social reproduction and affective life, is not a passive recipient of changes originating in the sphere of paid labour. Rather, the relationship between work and family is characterised by dynamic reciprocity: shifts in the temporal, spatial, and emotional organisation of work generate corresponding adjustments in domestic routines, relational patterns, and subjective experiences of family membership. Sociological scholarship has long recognised this interdependence, and a substantial body of literature has accumulated on the work-family interface, drawing on concepts such as spillover, role conflict, boundary management, and the gendered distribution of care and domestic labour. Remote work, by collapsing the spatial separation between workplace and home that characterised the Fordist employment regime, introduces a qualitatively new set of conditions into this interface. The home simultaneously becomes an office, a classroom, a childcare setting, and a site of leisure — a convergence that generates both opportunities for greater familial integration and pressures arising from the blurring of role boundaries. Understanding how families navigate these conditions is therefore a matter of considerable sociological urgency, with direct implications for family policy, occupational health, and the design of flexible work arrangements.

Despite the breadth of scholarly attention devoted to remote work in recent years, a significant gap persists in the empirical literature. The majority of studies examining the work-family interface under remote work conditions have focused on adult dyadic relationships — specifically, the dynamics between employed partners in dual-earner households — or have addressed the psychological well-being and occupational performance of remote workers themselves. Children, and particularly school-age children, have occupied a peripheral position in this research landscape, typically appearing as a background contextual variable rather than as a substantive focus of inquiry. This lacuna is particularly notable given that households with school-age children represent a distinctive and analytically important configuration: such children are old enough to perceive and be affected by changes in parental availability and domestic atmosphere, yet young enough to retain strong dependencies on parental presence, attention, and emotional regulation. The school-age period, spanning roughly ages seven to fifteen, is moreover a phase of significant cognitive, social, and identity development, during which the quality of parent-child interaction and the stability of the home environment carry well-documented developmental consequences. The intersection of remote work, family relations, and school-age children as a specific population therefore constitutes a research gap that the present thesis seeks to address.

The aim of this thesis is to examine the extent to which the performance of remote work by at least one parent affects the quality of family relations in households with school-age children. The central research problem is formulated as follows: in what ways, and to what degree, does parental remote work modify the relational dynamics — including parent-child interaction, partnership functioning, domestic labour distribution, and the emotional climate of the household — in families with children aged seven to fifteen years? From this overarching problem, four research questions are derived. First, does parental remote work affect the frequency and quality of parent-child interaction, and if so, in what direction? Second, how does remote work influence the quality of the partnership relationship, including satisfaction with the division of domestic responsibilities? Third, is there a relationship between the duration and intensity of remote work arrangements and the experience of work-family conflict, and does this relationship differ by parental gender? Fourth, does the remote work of a parent influence the academic performance and scholastic engagement of school-age children in the household? These questions correspond to four research hypotheses that structure the empirical component of the study. Hypothesis H1 posits that parental remote work is associated with an increased frequency of parent-child interaction, though not necessarily with improved quality. Hypothesis H2 proposes that full-time remote work is associated with lower partnership satisfaction compared to hybrid or non-remote arrangements, mediated by elevated role conflict. Hypothesis H3 holds that longer duration of remote work predicts higher levels of experienced work-family conflict, with gender moderating this relationship. Hypothesis H4, formulated as a null hypothesis, posits that parental remote work exerts no statistically significant effect on the perceived academic performance of school-age children.

To address these questions, an original empirical study was designed and conducted. The study employed a cross-sectional questionnaire survey administered to a purposive sample of one hundred and forty-seven parents currently engaged in remote or hybrid work arrangements and residing in households with at least one school-age child between the ages of seven and fifteen. Data collection took place in Poland between 2023 and 2024, and the instrument combined standardised quantitative scales — including measures of work-family conflict, relationship satisfaction, parental availability, and domestic labour distribution — with open-ended qualitative items intended to capture subjective experiences and perceptions that elude purely metric operationalisations. The mixed-methods design was adopted in recognition of the fact that the relational phenomena under examination are simultaneously amenable to systematic quantitative analysis and irreducibly embedded in the interpretive frameworks and lived experience of participants. Analytical procedures included Pearson correlation, independent samples t-tests, and linear regression for the quantitative hypotheses, supplemented by thematic analysis of responses to the open-ended items. The study is exploratory in character, contributing descriptive and explanatory insights into a domain that remains empirically understudied in the Polish context, while generating hypotheses for future longitudinal and comparative investigation.

The theoretical foundations of the thesis are drawn from four conceptual frameworks that, taken together, provide a multidimensional lens through which the work-family interface can be examined. Work-Family Border Theory, as developed by Sue Campbell Clark, conceptualises the boundary between work and family domains as a flexible but consequential demarcation, the permeability and flexibility of which determine how individuals navigate the transition between roles. This framework is particularly apposite for the analysis of remote work, which systematically weakens the spatial and temporal borders that ordinarily separate professional and familial life. The Spillover-Crossover Model, advanced by Arnold Bakker and Evangelia Demerouti, extends Border Theory by distinguishing between within-person spillover of affective states from one domain to another and the crossover of such states between partners or family members — a distinction of considerable relevance in households where multiple individuals share a work-from-home environment. Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Systems Theory provides a structural account of child development as embedded within nested contextual systems, and offers a framework for understanding how changes in the microsystem — the immediate domestic environment — ramify into the child's developmental trajectory. Finally, Role Theory, in its classical sociological formulation and its application to work-family research, addresses the mechanisms through which the simultaneous occupation of multiple, potentially conflicting social roles generates strain, negotiation, and adaptive behaviour. Together, these frameworks allow the thesis to address remote work not merely as an employment arrangement but as a socially and relationally embedded condition with implications for all members of the household.

The thesis is organised into three substantive chapters, preceded by this introduction and followed by a conclusion. The first chapter establishes the conceptual and contextual foundations of the study. It opens with a definitional and typological analysis of remote work arrangements, distinguishing between fully remote, hybrid, and telework configurations and surveying the principal dimensions along which such arrangements vary. The historical development of remote work is then traced, from its early institutionalisation in the 1970s and 1980s to its mass diffusion during the COVID-19 pandemic, with particular attention to the regulatory and technological conditions that enabled each phase of expansion. A demographic profile of remote workers in Poland and across European Union member states is constructed on the basis of available statistical sources, identifying the sectoral, occupational, educational, and gender distributions that characterise the remote-working population. The chapter concludes by introducing the four theoretical frameworks described above and by situating school-age children as a distinct and underresearched variable within work-family scholarship, establishing the conceptual rationale for the focus adopted in subsequent chapters.

The second chapter turns to the substantive analysis of how remote work reshapes family relations across five analytically distinct dimensions. The first concerns the spatial and temporal reorganisation of the home environment: the reconfiguration of domestic space into a hybrid work-residential setting, the restructuring of daily schedules, and the negotiation of temporal boundaries between work and family time. The second dimension examines parental availability, distinguishing between quantitative availability — time physically present in the household — and qualitative availability, understood as attentive, responsive engagement with children's needs. The third dimension addresses the division of domestic labour and partnership dynamics, with particular attention to the persistence of gender asymmetries in the distribution of care and household tasks under remote work conditions. The fourth dimension analyses communication patterns and conflict regulation within the family, exploring how the sustained co-presence of family members in shared space affects both the frequency of communication and the character of interpersonal friction. The fifth dimension considers the emotional climate of the household and the psychological well-being of family members, drawing on the Spillover-Crossover framework to theorise how occupational stress and satisfaction permeate the relational atmosphere of the home. Throughout the chapter, existing empirical evidence is critically reviewed and synthesised in relation to the theoretical frameworks introduced in Chapter 1.

The third chapter presents the original empirical study in full. It opens with an account of the research design and methodological assumptions, including the epistemological position informing the mixed-methods approach and the operationalisation of key constructs. The characteristics of the research sample and the data collection procedure are described in detail, enabling assessment of the study's representativeness and analytical scope. The results are then presented in two analytical sections: the first reports findings pertaining to parental perceptions of family relations — encompassing parent-child interaction, partnership satisfaction, domestic labour distribution, and experienced work-family conflict — and tests Hypotheses H1 through H3. The second section focuses on child-focused indicators of family functioning, including parental perceptions of children's academic performance, attentiveness, and emotional state, and tests Hypothesis H4. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the findings in light of the theoretical assumptions and prior research reviewed in Chapters 1 and 2, interpreting both the confirmed and disconfirmed hypotheses within the broader scholarly conversation on work-family dynamics. The Conclusion that follows the empirical chapter synthesises the study's findings with the theoretical framework, formulates a direct answer to the central research problem, and derives practical implications for employers, families, and policymakers. It also acknowledges the principal limitations of the study and identifies directions for future research that would address those limitations and extend the analytical reach of the present inquiry.

Several delimitations of scope and methodological constraints should be acknowledged at the outset. The sample was recruited by purposive and convenience methods, which limits the statistical generalisability of the findings to the broader population of remote-working parents in Poland. The data reflect parental self-reports and proxy accounts of children's functioning; the children themselves were not directly surveyed, introducing the possibility of systematic perceptual biases in the reporting of child-focused outcomes. The cross-sectional design of the study precludes causal inference: associations identified between remote work characteristics and family relational outcomes may reflect pre-existing household configurations, selection effects, or unmeasured confounding variables rather than the direct influence of remote work per se. These limitations are addressed in the methodological chapter and revisited in the Conclusion, where they are situated within a broader reflection on the epistemological challenges inherent in studying dynamic relational phenomena through a single-point survey instrument. Notwithstanding these constraints, the study contributes meaningful empirical evidence to a field in which rigorous data on the Polish context remain scarce, and advances the theoretical understanding of remote work as a socially and relationally consequential phenomenon rather than merely a logistical variation in the organisation of paid employment.

Chapter 1. Remote Work as a Contemporary Socio-Economic Phenomenon

1.1. Definition and Typology of Remote Work Arrangements

The conceptual landscape of work performed outside the traditional office environment is characterised by a plurality of competing terms, each carrying distinct institutional, legal, and analytical connotations. In scholarly and policy discourse, the terms telework, remote work, distance work, and home-based work are frequently employed interchangeably, yet their definitional boundaries differ in ways that carry significance for both research design and legislative application. The International Labour Organization (ILO) defines telework broadly as the use of information and communication technologies to perform work outside the employer's premises, a formulation that encompasses both home-based and mobile arrangements. The European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, Eurofound, adopts a comparable approach, emphasising the decoupling of work location from the employer's principal site as the defining criterion. In the Polish legal order, remote work was formally institutionalised through amendments to the Labour Code that entered into force in April 2023, establishing it as a mode of work in which an employee performs duties wholly or partially at a place indicated by the employee and agreed with the employer, including at the employee's place of residence, with no requirement that such a place be the home in a strict sense.

The proliferation of hybrid arrangements following the pandemic has rendered the definitional question more complex and more practically consequential. As Russo et al. observe, the word „hybrid” has become a popular umbrella label attributed to various work-related terms, encompassing hybrid workplaces, hybrid work, and hybrid teams, among other configurations.^{[1, s. 1]} Google Workspace experts define hybrid work as „a spectrum of flexible work arrangements in which an employee's work location and/or hours are not strictly standardised,”^{[1, s. 1]} a formulation that captures anything lying between rigid office attendance and fully flexible global employment. Fayard et al. define working in the hybrid office more narrowly as the practice of moving between a home workspace and a traditional office building,^{[1, s. 2]} while Halford's earlier conceptualisation proposed the notion of „multiply located” workspaces, drawing attention to the architectural and organisational dimensions of the phenomenon alongside the employee's perspective.^{[1, s. 2]} Russo et al. further argue that the core dimensions relevant for understanding individual work arrangements are location — where work is performed — and work schedule — when it is performed,^{[1, s. 2]} a framework that provides the analytical basis for the typology adopted in the present thesis.

For the purposes of this thesis, a systematic four-category typology is required that distinguishes between qualitatively different modes of remote work arrangement. The following categories are operationalised:

Fully remote work — the employee performs all duties from a location outside the employer's premises on a permanent contractual basis, with no obligation of regular office attendance;
Hybrid work — the employee alternates between remote and on-site work according to a defined or flexible schedule, with both locations constituting legitimate and anticipated work environments;
Occasional remote work — the employee works predominantly on-site but is granted the possibility of working remotely on a limited, discretionary, or event-driven basis without this constituting a structural feature of the employment arrangement;
Crisis-driven telework — a temporary, externally imposed form of remote work adopted in response to extraordinary circumstances, such as a public health emergency, without prior organisational planning or individual employee preference as the initiating factor.

This typological differentiation carries direct implications for the analysis of work–family boundaries. Fully remote and hybrid arrangements entail a permanent or semi-permanent restructuring of the domestic environment as a workspace, whereas occasional and crisis-driven forms may involve comparable spatial conditions without anticipatory adaptation on the part of either the employer or the household. The distinction between these types is not merely descriptive; it bears upon the degree to which role boundaries between the occupational and familial spheres become permeable, a dynamic of central importance to the theoretical frameworks examined in section 1.4 of this chapter. For the empirical investigation conducted in Chapter 3, this typology serves as a key independent variable, permitting comparison across arrangement types rather than treating all non-office work as a homogeneous phenomenon.

Table 1.1. Typology of remote work arrangements: core dimensions and work–family boundary implications
Type	Primary location	Contractual basis	Origin of arrangement	Boundary permeability
Fully remote	Home / alternative site	Permanent	Agreement or preference	High — continuous
Hybrid	Home and office alternating	Permanent	Agreement or organisational policy	Medium–high — episodic
Occasional	Predominantly office	Discretionary	Individual request or ad hoc	Low — irregular
Crisis-driven	Home (externally imposed)	Temporary	External compulsion	Very high — unplanned

1.2. Historical Development and Institutional Diffusion of Remote Work

The concept of performing paid employment outside the conventional office environment is not a product of the twenty-first century, though the scale and social visibility of the phenomenon have undergone qualitative transformation in recent decades. The foundational intellectual impetus is conventionally attributed to Jack Nilles, whose work in the 1970s introduced the term telecommuting to describe the substitution of telecommunications for commuting travel, framing remote work primarily as a solution to urban congestion and energy consumption rather than as a labour relations phenomenon. The 1980s and 1990s witnessed a gradual expansion of pilot programmes in North American and Western European corporations, facilitated by advances in personal computing and early internet connectivity, yet uptake remained modest and largely confined to knowledge-intensive sectors. Remote work at this stage was frequently conceptualised as an exceptional accommodation extended to particular categories of employees rather than as a structural feature of work organisation, and it carried associations with professional marginality rather than with preferred employment conditions.

The institutional recognition of telework at the European level was formalised through the European Framework Agreement on Telework, concluded by the social partners in 2002. This instrument defined telework as a form of organising and performing work using information technology where work, which could also be performed at the employer's premises, is carried out away from those premises on a regular basis, and it established minimum standards regarding the voluntary character of the arrangement and the protection of teleworkers' rights. However, implementation across member states was uneven, reflecting divergent industrial relations traditions, sectoral compositions, and cultural attitudes towards physical presence in the workplace as a marker of commitment and professional credibility. In many continental European contexts, including Poland, the cultural equation of visibility with productivity represented a structural impediment to the broader diffusion of remote work that legislative change alone could not rapidly overcome.

Poland's trajectory within this broader European context was characterised by delayed adoption and structural constraints. The dominance of manufacturing, trade, and construction in the Polish employment structure limited the potential pool of remote workers to a proportionally smaller segment of the workforce compared to economies with a higher share of knowledge-intensive services. Formal legislative provision for telework was introduced into the Polish Labour Code in 2007 but was applied narrowly and without substantive uptake across the wider economy, remaining a peripheral feature of the national labour market for over a decade. Cultural norms associating professional competence with physical attendance, reinforced by management practices, further retarded diffusion beyond the information technology and financial sectors where remote work had achieved some degree of normalisation by the mid-2010s.

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 constituted a rupture in the historical trajectory of remote work, precipitating an unprecedented and compulsory shift to home-based working across Europe and beyond. Between 37 and 40 per cent of the European Union (EU) workforce transitioned to some form of remote or hybrid work during the acute phase of the pandemic, a scale of adoption that had no precedent in peacetime economic history. As Russo et al. note, the better-than-expected forced working from home experiences, coupled with the investments enabling remote work during the pandemic, led many knowledge workers to rethink their return to offices.^{[1, s. 1]} Employees began to express a preference for retaining remote or hybrid arrangements even after the lifting of public health restrictions, and some indicated readiness to leave employment if the permission to work remotely was withdrawn.^{[1, s. 1]} In response, many companies altered their work policies and experimented with new arrangements that balance expectations from employees and management regarding where and when work should be performed.^{[1, s. 1]}

The post-pandemic period has been characterised by a process of organisational negotiation between employee preferences for continued flexibility and managerial inclinations towards partial re-centralisation. In Poland, this process was accompanied by the 2023 legislative reform that replaced provisional pandemic-era provisions with a permanent and more comprehensive regulatory framework. Research conducted in the years following the pandemic has thus been confronted with a qualitatively different object of analysis compared to pre-2020 studies: remote work as a normalised, institutionally embedded feature of work organisation rather than as an exceptional or experimental arrangement. This distinction is of methodological significance for the interpretation of the present study, the empirical data for which were collected in the post-pandemic context in which remote work had ceased to be a novelty and had become a recognised and legally regulated employment modality.

1.3. Demographic Profile of Remote Workers in Poland and Europe

The population of remote and hybrid workers is not uniformly distributed across social categories but is instead structured by a set of intersecting demographic and occupational determinants that reflect underlying inequalities in the labour market. Analysis of data from the Polish Labour Force Survey (LFS) for the years 2022 and 2023, as well as from the European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS) conducted by Eurofound, permits the identification of five primary dimensions along which the profile of remote workers varies systematically. Understanding the demographic contours of remote work is essential not only for descriptive purposes but because these dimensions condition the nature and intensity of work–family dynamics in remote-working households, thereby constituting a necessary contextual backdrop for the empirical investigation conducted in Chapter 3.

Occupational sector constitutes the most powerful initial filter determining access to remote work. Information and communication technologies (ICT), financial and insurance activities, and professional and scientific services are sectors in which the incidence of remote work is substantially above average, reflecting the digital transferability of core tasks. Public administration represents a mixed case, with variation according to specific function and organisational culture. By contrast, manufacturing, construction, retail trade, health and social care, and hospitality — all of which account for significant shares of Polish employment — offer little or no scope for remote working, creating a structural divide between those workers for whom remote work is a feasible option and those for whom it is not. This sectoral divide intersects with educational attainment, which functions as the strongest individual-level predictor of remote work access across European data: workers with tertiary education are several times more likely to work remotely than those with secondary or primary qualifications, a disparity reflecting the concentration of knowledge-intensive tasks at higher occupational levels.

Gender constitutes a third dimension of significant analytical importance. European data indicate that women's access to remote work is, in aggregate, comparable to that of men, yet the experience of remote work differs in ways conditioned by persistent inequalities in the distribution of domestic labour. Women employed in remote or hybrid arrangements have been found to bear a disproportionate share of household responsibilities and childcare during working hours, a pattern that both reflects and reinforces pre-existing gender divisions. The co-location of work and family domains that remote work entails can, under conditions of unequal domestic labour distribution, intensify rather than mitigate gender inequalities within the household, a dynamic that is examined in greater detail in Chapter 2.

Household composition, particularly the presence of school-age children, represents a fourth dimension that distinguishes the remote work experience in ways directly pertinent to this thesis. Households with children in the primary and lower secondary education cycle face specific demands for parental availability and domestic coordination that are qualitatively different from those of childless households or households with older children. The implications of this demographic characteristic for work–family dynamics are examined in detail in section 1.5. Age and life-course stage constitute a fifth dimension: younger workers at early career stages are more likely to express preferences for hybrid arrangements, while workers in mid-career phases with established family commitments report stronger concern with the work–family interface dimensions of flexible working conditions, suggesting that the subjective value attributed to remote work varies across the life course in ways that interact with household composition.

Table 1.2. Key demographic determinants of remote work access in Poland and Europe
Dimension	Direction of effect on remote work access or experience	Primary data source
Occupational sector	ICT, finance, professional services — high incidence; manufacturing, construction, care — minimal incidence	Polish LFS 2022–2023; Eurofound EWCS
Educational attainment	Strongest individual predictor; tertiary education associated with substantially higher probability of remote work	Eurofound EWCS
Gender	Comparable access rates; women in remote work disproportionately bear domestic labour burden	Eurofound EWCS; Polish LFS 2022–2023
Household composition	Presence of school-age children intensifies work–family interface demands	Polish LFS 2022–2023
Age and life-course stage	Younger workers more likely to prefer hybrid; mid-career workers more concerned with work–family balance	Eurofound EWCS

1.4. Theoretical Frameworks for Analysing the Work–Family Interface

The analysis of remote work's effects on family relations requires a theoretical scaffolding capable of accounting for the multiple mechanisms through which occupational and familial spheres interact, reinforce, and undermine one another. The present thesis integrates three complementary theoretical frameworks that together constitute a synthetic analytical perspective: Work–Family Conflict Theory, Clark's Work–Family Border Theory, and Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Systems Theory. Each framework illuminates distinct dimensions of the phenomenon, and their integration enables a more comprehensive analytical approach than any single theory could provide. The choice of these three frameworks reflects their cumulative capacity to address the role-interaction, spatial-relational, and macro-contextual dimensions of remote work in family settings.

Work–Family Conflict (WFC) Theory, developed principally by Greenhaus and Beutell, conceptualises work–family conflict as a form of inter-role conflict in which the demands of work and family roles are mutually incompatible. Three distinct mechanisms of conflict are distinguished within this framework:

Time-based conflict — arises when the time devoted to one role reduces the time available for fulfilment of the other role, creating a zero-sum tension between occupational and familial demands;
Strain-based conflict — occurs when psychological or physical depletion generated in one domain — fatigue, anxiety, cognitive overload — impairs effective functioning in the other domain;
Behaviour-based conflict — emerges when behavioural norms appropriate to one role are incompatible with those expected in the other, as when the assertiveness or emotional detachment valued in professional contexts is poorly suited to the relational demands of parenting.

The bidirectional character of the conflict is of theoretical importance: work-to-family conflict and family-to-work conflict are empirically distinguishable phenomena, though research consistently indicates that the work-to-family direction is the more prevalent and consequential. In studies of work–family conflict among teaching professionals, Li et al. found that the interference of work with family was far greater than that of family with work, consistent with broader meta-analytic evidence regarding the asymmetric prevalence of these two directions.^{[2, s. 2]} In those studies, work–family conflict emerged as a significant negative predictor of job satisfaction, defined as the individual's subjective satisfaction with various factors related to work and reflecting positive emotional experience of the occupational role.^{[2, s. 2]} Although these findings are derived from a specific occupational group, the underlying mechanisms of role conflict, depletion, and affective spillover are applicable across diverse employment contexts. Greenhaus and Powell's enrichment model, which complements and extends the conflict perspective by identifying pathways through which participation in one role generates resources that enhance performance in the other, provides a counterweight to the predominantly negative conceptualisation of role interaction and is incorporated into the analytical framework of this thesis.

Clark's Work–Family Border Theory offers a spatial and temporal metaphor for the relationship between the work and family domains, conceptualising each as a distinct sphere with its own culture, rules, and social inhabitants. Employees are understood as „border-crossers” who traverse the boundary between these domains on a daily basis, and the theory focuses on the properties of the borders themselves: their permeability, defined as the degree to which elements from one domain may enter the other; and their flexibility, defined as the extent to which the border can contract or expand according to the demands of either domain. The concept of the border-keeper — a significant other in either domain who monitors and enforces boundary norms — is particularly relevant to the analysis of remote work in family contexts, as family members, including children, may assume informal border-keeping functions within the household. Remote and hybrid work arrangements fundamentally alter the spatial and temporal characteristics of both domains by locating them within the same physical environment, thereby rendering the home simultaneously a domestic and occupational space. The theoretical implication is that the management of work–family boundaries becomes an ongoing, active process of negotiation rather than a structural outcome maintained by physical separation.

The third theoretical pillar is Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Systems Theory, which conceptualises human development and social experience as embedded within a set of nested contextual systems. The microsystem encompasses the immediate settings in which an individual participates directly — for the remote-working parent with school-age children, this includes the household, the professional virtual environment, and the school. The mesosystem refers to the interactions and relationships between two or more microsystems, making it the level at which work–family dynamics, in the strict sense, operate: the interaction between parental occupational arrangements and children's school experiences occurs at the mesosystem level. The exosystem encompasses settings that affect the individual indirectly, such as the employer's organisational policies regarding remote work, the scheduling decisions of the school institution, or the availability of childcare facilities in the local community. The macrosystem constitutes the cultural, legislative, and ideological context within which all lower-level systems are embedded, encompassing labour law, gender norms, and social expectations regarding parenting and professional commitment. Applied to the study of remote work and family relations, Bronfenbrenner's framework directs analytical attention to the multi-level determinants of any observed outcome and prevents the attribution of complex social phenomena to a single cause.

The synthetic analytical perspective adopted in this thesis integrates these three frameworks by treating WFC Theory as the primary explanatory mechanism at the role-interaction level, Border Theory as the spatial and relational framework specifying the conditions under which conflicts or enrichments arise in remote work contexts, and Bronfenbrenner's model as the macro-level contextualisation situating individual experiences within their institutional and cultural environment. This integration is particularly suited to the study of families with school-age children, in whom the school constitutes a significant exosystem element whose schedule, demands, and institutional logic interact with parental occupational arrangements in ways that a purely psychological framework of role conflict cannot fully capture.

1.5. School-Age Children as a Distinct Variable in Work–Family Research

The presence of school-age children in the household does not constitute a mere background demographic characteristic in the study of remote work and family relations; rather, it represents a theoretically and empirically significant variable that systematically alters the nature, intensity, and direction of work–family dynamics. The present thesis focuses specifically on children in the age range of seven to fifteen years, corresponding to the Polish primary education cycle, and this focus requires explicit justification at three levels: developmental-psychological, sociological, and methodological. The following elaboration of these three levels of justification constitutes the conceptual rationale for the specific empirical choices made in Chapter 3.

At the developmental-psychological level, children in the seven-to-fifteen age range possess a qualitatively distinct capacity to observe, interpret, and respond to parental work behaviours. Primary school children are capable of recognising signs of parental stress, distraction, and availability, and they develop interpretive frameworks for the meaning of work and professional identity within the household environment. The structured school schedule — with its daily rhythms of departure, attendance, homework demands, and extracurricular activities — creates a temporal pattern that operates largely in parallel to, but not in synchrony with, the demands of remote professional work. The intersection of these two schedules generates predictable and recurrent occasions of conflict, negotiation, and boundary disruption that are structurally different from those encountered in households without children or with children of a different developmental stage. Moreover, children in this age range make specific cognitive and emotional demands on parents that differ from those associated with infancy on the one hand or adolescent autonomy on the other, including demands for assistance with academic tasks, supervision of peer social interactions, and availability for emotional processing.

At the sociological level, the presence of school-age children functions as an amplifier of work–family conflict in remote-working households. The remote work arrangement collapses the spatial separation between occupational and family roles that the traditional office model maintained, and for parents of school-age children, this collapse is compounded by the children's spatial and temporal presence in the home during afternoon hours, school holidays, and illness episodes. Well-being and work-life balance have been identified as dimensions that are perceived differently depending on individual work location preferences,^{[1, s. 3]} and the presence of school-age children shapes those perceptions in ways that are distinct from other household compositions. The demands placed on parental attention and domestic coordination are structurally greater than in households without children or with children who are either too young to have structured schedules or old enough to operate with greater autonomy. Furthermore, the gendered distribution of childcare responsibilities means that the intensity of these effects is differentially experienced by mothers and fathers in heterosexual partnerships, a dimension integrated into the analytical framework through the gender variable in the demographic profile discussed in section 1.3.

The methodological justification for treating school-age children as a distinct variable is of equal importance. The following three methodological considerations are identified:

Children in the seven-to-fifteen age range are capable of serving as informants in research on family dynamics, provided that age-appropriate instruments are employed, thereby enabling the collection of child-perspective data that is not reducible to parental self-report;
Restricting the sample to households with children in a defined age range controls for a source of heterogeneity that would otherwise confound the interpretation of findings concerning work–family dynamics, permitting more precise estimation of the effects attributable to remote work arrangements;
The institutional structure of Polish primary education provides a consistent external referent — a standardised schedule, curriculum demands, and institutional calendar — that allows for meaningful comparison across households and facilitates the operationalisation of child-centred indicators of family functioning.

The category of school-age children is not, however, internally homogeneous, and this thesis acknowledges such heterogeneity as a limitation requiring explicit treatment. Within the seven-to-fifteen age range, significant variation exists in developmental stage, cognitive maturity, degree of school-related autonomy, and the nature and intensity of demands placed on parents. A seven-year-old in the first year of primary school and a fifteen-year-old approaching the end of the primary cycle occupy qualitatively different positions in relation to parental work arrangements. The empirical chapter employs age as a continuous variable within the defined range, permitting the exploration of within-group variation rather than treating all school-age children as developmentally equivalent.

In summary, the focus on families with school-age children as the analytical unit is warranted by the developmental specificity of this population, the sociological amplification of work–family dynamics that their presence entails, and the methodological advantages associated with their capacity to participate as informants alongside parental self-report. The combination of these three considerations distinguishes the present thesis from studies that examine remote work and family relations in more generic terms, and it grounds the empirical strategy elaborated in Chapter 3 in a coherent theoretical and substantive rationale. The conceptual apparatus assembled in this chapter — the typology of arrangements, the historical and demographic context, the three-framework theoretical integration, and the specific variable of school-age children — provides the analytical foundation upon which the subsequent examination of family relations under remote work conditions is constructed.

Writing Chapter 2 of the thesis now, using only the provided sources with proper page citations and context acknowledgements for tier-„tlo” sources.

Chapter 2. Family Relations Under the Conditions of Remote Work

2.1. Spatial and Temporal Reorganisation of the Home Environment

The sustained physical presence of a working parent within the domestic environment constitutes one of the most structurally significant transformations associated with remote work arrangements. Traditionally, the home has served as a site of rest, intimacy, and child-rearing — a domain demarcated from the professional sphere by the daily ritual of commuting and the spatial separation of workplace from residence. When these boundaries are eroded, the home is progressively reconfigured into a multifunctional arena in which the demands of professional productivity and the requirements of family life must coexist within a single physical space. Research examining remote e-workers documents this transformation systematically, identifying the management of spatial and temporal boundaries as one of the primary challenges confronting workers who operate from home, with evidence indicating that all interviewees noted remote working as important to the management of their non-working lives, including relational commitments.^{[3, s. 23]}

The spatial dimension of this reconfiguration is particularly consequential in households characterised by limited dedicated workspace. Where a purpose-built home office is unavailable, remote-working parents are frequently compelled to appropriate shared rooms — living areas, kitchens, or bedrooms — as provisional workstations. This spatial compression generates tensions over the allocation and use of physical space that are experienced differentially by family members. Children's freedom of movement within the home may be restricted during working hours, as parental concentration demands reduced levels of ambient noise and minimised interruption. The presence of professional materials — laptops, documents, telecommunications equipment — in spaces previously understood as family territory constitutes a symbolic as well as a practical intrusion, signalling the recategorisation of shared space as a professional domain. Qualitative evidence from remote e-workers documents the lived consequences of insufficient boundary management: the habit of logging on to work past normal hours, preferring work engagement over family interaction, and the inability to recognise when continued working becomes harmful to domestic relationships are identified as examples of where remote working can outweigh the benefits of flexibility.^{[3, s. 25]}

The temporal dimension of this reorganisation is no less significant. Conventional employment structures impose a temporal architecture on the working day through fixed hours of departure and return, with commuting functioning as a transitional ritual that facilitates the psychological shift between professional and domestic modes of engagement. Remote work dissolves this temporal architecture, leaving workers to construct the boundaries of their working day through individual discipline and negotiated household arrangements. Evidence drawn from research on the post-pandemic period documents that household interruptions — including childcare and domestic responsibilities — significantly affected employees' focus and psychological well-being during remote work, confirming that the dissolution of spatial and temporal demarcation has measurable consequences for both professional and family functioning.^{[4, s. 9]} The blurring of work-life boundaries constitutes one of the most consistently reported challenges of remote work across diverse national and occupational contexts, with role conflicts and stress arising from technological reliance documented as prevalent accompanying issues.^{[4, s. 3]}

Boundary management theory provides a conceptual framework for analysing the strategies through which families respond to these spatial and temporal pressures. The theory distinguishes between integration-oriented and segmentation-oriented approaches, with those who favour integration characterising flexible movement between work and family domains and those who favour segmentation preferring strict demarcation. Empirical evidence suggests that the effectiveness of either approach depends less on its categorical type than on the degree of congruence between the strategy adopted and the expectations of all household members. Families in which the remote-working parent favours integration while other members — particularly school-age children — expect clear delineation between parental working time and parental availability may experience heightened conflict and frustration. The school-age child, as an active and vocal participant in domestic life, functions as an important negotiating agent in these processes, initiating interactions, making spatial demands, and producing the ambient sound and activity that boundary construction must accommodate.

Research with remote e-workers highlights the role of successful boundary management as a determinant of broader family well-being outcomes. Interviewees who reported capacity to draw clear temporal limits around their professional activities demonstrated higher levels of relational satisfaction and reported fewer incidents of work-related stress spilling over into family interactions. Specifically, work and non-working lives were reported to be capable of positive integration when remote workers managed working hours deliberately, with the enhancement of home relationships through increased contact identified as one of the principal benefits of flexible working.^{[3, s. 39]} Conversely, habitual boundary violations — logging on outside designated working hours, prioritising work tasks over family commitments, and the psychological inability to disengage from professional concerns — were associated with increased domestic tension and diminished family functioning. In this respect, the spatial and temporal reorganisation of the home under remote work conditions functions not merely as a logistical challenge but as a structural determinant of the quality of family relations.

Table 2.1. Enhancing and detracting factors of remote work across key dimensions of family relevance
Dimension	Enhancing factors	Detracting factors
Work-life balance	Integration of work and non-working lives; potential improvement of home relationships through increased contact	Blurring of boundaries between work and non-work; reduced time for respite; temptation to extend working hours
Well-being	Fewer days lost to absenteeism; reduced commuting-related stress and childcare logistical burden	Limited social interaction; sedentary behaviour; risk of emotional exhaustion
Job effectiveness	Increased productivity; greater decision-making autonomy; flexible scheduling of tasks	Difficulty in relationship-building; challenges of communication and monitoring from a distance

Source: Elaborated on the basis of Grant, Wallace, and Spurgeon (2013, p. 39).^{[3, s. 39]}

2.2. Parental Availability and Quality of Parent-Child Interaction

One of the more counterintuitive findings to emerge from research on remote work and family functioning concerns the relationship between physical co-presence and relational availability. The assumption that a parent working from home is necessarily more available to their children than one who commutes to an external workplace constitutes a widespread lay expectation; the empirical literature presents a considerably more nuanced picture. Physical proximity and relational availability are conceptually and empirically distinct: the former refers to bodily co-location within a shared space, while the latter denotes the parent's psychological capacity to engage attentively and responsively with the child's communicative and emotional bids. Remote work conditions may simultaneously maximise the former while substantially constraining the latter, producing a paradox of co-presence without genuine engagement.

The mechanisms through which remote work may undermine relational availability are multiple and intersecting. Cognitive preoccupation with professional tasks constitutes perhaps the most pervasive: a parent who is mentally engaged with work-related problems, deadlines, or communications is functionally unavailable to the child even when physically present in the same room. Professional interruptions — incoming messages, video calls, or time-sensitive demands — may require immediate response at unpredictable intervals, fragmenting the parent's attention and curtailing the quality of whatever interaction had been initiated. Work-related stress further diminishes the parent's emotional resources for engaged and patient interaction. In research on remote work during the pandemic period, work-home interference — defined as the degree to which professional demands encroach upon domestic functioning — was identified as one of the four primary challenges experienced by workers operating from home, alongside ineffective communication, procrastination, and loneliness; social support emerged as positively correlated with lower levels of all these challenges.^[9]

The phenomenon of the parent who is physically present but psychologically absent has been documented in qualitative research, with family members describing experiences of unresponsiveness, distraction, and emotional unavailability despite bodily co-location. This paradox is not without precedent in family sociology: the concept of quality time emerged in part as a response to evidence that the duration of parental presence does not automatically translate into meaningful relational engagement. What remote work introduces is a specific structural condition in which the parent's professional role and parental role compete for activation simultaneously and within a shared physical space, creating persistent interference between role demands that erodes the quality of parent-child interaction. Research has found that household distractions, including childcare responsibilities and technical difficulties, exacerbate anxiety and contribute to conditions in which parental emotional availability is compromised.^{[4, s. 9]}

It is equally important to acknowledge the conditions under which remote work may positively affect parent-child interaction. The elimination of commuting time represents a concrete temporal resource that can, under favourable conditions, be redirected towards family engagement. Naturally occurring breaks during the working day — intervals between meetings, pauses between tasks — may afford brief but meaningful interactions with children that would be structurally impossible in an external workplace. Research examining work-life integration among remote e-workers confirms that some workers report improvements in the texture of home relationships through increased contact and greater flexibility in responding to family needs during the day, with interviewees noting that returning home and being with family — even while still technically working — was experienced as relationally restorative.^{[3, s. 23]}

The gendered dimension of parental availability under remote work conditions warrants specific attention. Women working remotely have been documented as more likely to integrate childcare and household tasks into their working day, managing their children's needs concurrently with professional responsibilities rather than maintaining strict temporal demarcation. Research with remote e-workers found that women cited managing household tasks and childcare situations as primary advantages of remote work, while men cited having quality time with the family; managing working hours emerged as the most important factor for achieving a positive work-life balance regardless of gender or the presence of dependants.^[3] This integration pattern, while potentially beneficial in terms of parental presence, simultaneously increases the cognitive and emotional load carried by the working mother, with implications for both professional performance and the relational quality of the interaction offered to children.

The age and developmental stage of the child constitute further moderating variables of considerable significance. School-age children possess the cognitive capacity to understand that their parent is engaged in professional activity and the communicative competence to negotiate access to parental attention through verbal means. This capacity differentiates them from younger children, who lack the understanding of work as a structurally distinct activity and whose bids for parental engagement are less amenable to deferral. Nevertheless, school-age children's comprehension of work-role boundaries is partial and context-dependent, and the sustained physical proximity of a parent who is functionally unavailable may generate frustration, confusion, and a sense of relational rejection that younger children express through behavioural means but older children may internalise or articulate through explicit complaint. Personality characteristics of workers — including self-regulation capacities — have been identified as significant moderators of adaptability to remote work, suggesting that the resources available to parents for managing competing role demands vary systematically across individuals.^{[4, s. 13]}

2.3. Division of Domestic Labour and Partnership Dynamics

The question of how domestic labour is distributed between partners in households organised around remote work arrangements connects microsociological research on gender and the family to the structural conditions introduced by post-pandemic transformations in employment. Prior to the widespread adoption of remote work, the distribution of household responsibilities and childcare tasks in European households had been systematically documented as unequal, with women performing a disproportionate share of domestic labour irrespective of their employment status or income level. Remote work, it was hypothesised, might function as a catalyst for redistributing these responsibilities by relocating the working parent — often the male partner — to the domestic environment on a sustained basis, making their contribution to household tasks and childcare more feasible and more visible on a daily basis.

The empirical evidence on this hypothesis is complex and, in many respects, sobering. Studies examining the distribution of domestic labour during the pandemic-induced shift to remote work found that in numerous households the increased physical presence of the male partner within the home did not result in proportionate redistribution of domestic responsibilities. Research drawing on Boundary Theory documents that household interruptions — including childcare and domestic responsibilities — significantly affected the focus and psychological well-being of remote workers, with the burden falling disproportionately on women who managed such interruptions while simultaneously maintaining professional productivity.^[4] This pattern reflects the operation of gender ideology as a structural force that persists even when the material conditions that might facilitate redistribution are objectively in place. The concept of intensive mothering ideology is analytically relevant here: it describes the cultural expectation that mothers should provide high levels of individualised, emotionally engaged care for their children, an expectation that operates independently of employment status and is activated, rather than suspended, by the mother's physical presence within the domestic space.

In studies of work-family conflict (WFC) among female employees in service sector contexts, it has been demonstrated that women face greater family demands and expectations as a function of gender role norms, with these demands compounding over the life course as family and professional responsibilities intensify simultaneously.^[7] Research examining the consequences of this conflict in such contexts finds that WFC positively influences turnover intention, confirming that the burden of competing domestic and professional demands carries consequences extending well beyond the domestic sphere into the domain of professional commitment and retention.^[7] These patterns are not confined to specific sectors but reflect broader structural features of the work-family interface as experienced by women across diverse labour market contexts.

The implications for partnership dynamics are considerable. Unequal domestic labour distribution under remote work conditions constitutes a source of ongoing negotiation, conflict, and, in some cases, sustained resentment between partners. The visibility that remote work affords — each partner is able to observe the other's management of professional and domestic demands in real time — may intensify the experience of perceived inequity. A partner who observes the other engaging in uninterrupted professional work while household tasks remain unaddressed, or who perceives that their own integration of domestic responsibilities into the working day is not matched by equivalent contributions from their partner, is likely to experience frustration that progressively erodes relational satisfaction. In studies of telework in corporate settings, research has found that telework increases the permeability of the boundary between work and private life, including family, partnership, and leisure domains, with the potential to increase the burden on the teleworker through the absence of physical separation between work and private space.^[5] When this burden is distributed unevenly between partners, its relational consequences are amplified.

Gender ideology continues to shape domestic labour distribution in remote work households, often independently of structural opportunity for redistribution.
Women working remotely disproportionately integrate household tasks and childcare into their professional day, increasing cognitive and emotional load.
The real-time visibility of domestic inequity that remote work affords may intensify relational tension between partners relative to office-based employment arrangements.
Work-family conflict generated by domestic inequity carries documented consequences for professional performance, job satisfaction, and employment retention among women.
Equitable redistribution of domestic labour is more achievable in households where both partners work remotely and institutional support structures — flexible scheduling, childcare assistance, generous family leave — are concurrently available.

Evidence exists, nonetheless, that remote work has in some households facilitated genuine renegotiation of domestic arrangements. Households characterised by explicit communication about expectations, flexible professional schedules, and a shared ideological commitment to equitable partnership have been documented as achieving redistributions of domestic labour that would have been structurally more difficult under conventional office-based employment. The conditions for such renegotiation appear to include the remote work of both partners rather than one, the availability of adequate home-office infrastructure, and the existence of institutional supports that relieve the total domestic burden rather than merely relocating it within the household. In studies of work-family conflict, recommendations for mitigating the unequal domestic burden include the implementation of flexible scheduling, childcare assistance, and more generous family leave policies, alongside mentoring programmes and interventions that promote collaborative workplace culture.^[7] The sociological significance of domestic labour patterns under remote work conditions extends beyond the partnership dyad: children in households characterised by unequal arrangements observe and internalise models of gender and domestic responsibility that may influence their own future role expectations, embedding the dynamics of remote work within broader processes of social reproduction.

2.4. Communication Patterns and Conflict Regulation Within the Family

The structural conditions introduced by remote work do not merely alter the physical and temporal organisation of the home; they also reshape the patterns of communication through which family members negotiate their shared life and regulate the conflicts that inevitably arise within it. Family communication constitutes the primary medium through which relational identities are constructed and maintained, through which household arrangements are negotiated, and through which the emotional states of individual members are expressed, received, and processed. Changes to the conditions under which communication occurs — the spatial and temporal reorganisation of the household, the blurring of role boundaries, the management of competing professional and domestic demands — necessarily have consequences for both the quantity and the quality of intrafamilial communication.

Remote work conditions may increase the frequency of brief communicative exchanges between family members during the working day, as the parent's physical proximity affords opportunities for spontaneous interaction that are structurally unavailable in office-based employment. However, increased frequency does not necessarily correspond to enhanced quality. The interruptions that characterise remote work — incoming professional communications, the demands of urgent tasks, cognitive preoccupation with unresolved work problems — may fragment these interactions, rendering them partial, distracted, or inconclusive. Research on remote e-workers documents the difficulty of maintaining appropriate boundaries between professional and personal communication, noting that habitual accessing of work remotely, even during nominally personal time, limits the amount of time available for non-work activities and may cause family interaction to be experienced by the parent as competing with professional obligations rather than as a valued primary engagement.^{[3, s. 25]}

The phenomenon of work talk spillover deserves specific attention. Professional concerns — deadlines, collegial difficulties, organisational anxieties — tend to permeate family conversations in households where the boundary between working time and family time is insufficiently delineated. The working parent who has not psychologically disengaged from professional preoccupations at the end of the formal working day may introduce these concerns into family meals, evening routines, and other shared activities, crowding out family-centred communication and reducing the conversational space available for the expression of children's concerns, experiences, and emotional needs. Research on the effect of telework on communication behaviour confirms that both the frequency and quality of communication are affected by reduced co-location, with qualitative losses arising through increased reliance on medium-based communication; this applies not only to workplace communication but extends to the character of interpersonal exchange more broadly, affecting private and trust-building communication that provides emotional connection.^[5]

The relationship between remote work and intrafamilial conflict is multifaceted. Role conflict — the experience of incompatible demands from the professional and parental roles — is documented as a consistent accompaniment of remote work, and this conflict generates psychological states that increase the likelihood of irritable or depleted responses to normal family interactions. Research confirms that household distractions and role conflicts arising from the conditions of remote work are prevalent stressors that exacerbate anxiety and contribute to diminished emotional regulation capacity.^{[4, s. 9]} In research on remote work during the pandemic period, work-home interference was identified as one of four primary challenges experienced by workers operating from home, with workload additionally linked to higher levels of this interference; social support, by contrast, was positively correlated with lower levels of all four identified challenges.^[9]

Research on parent-child homework interactions provides a specific empirical window onto communication dynamics in family contexts characterised by the simultaneous management of multiple competing demands. In studies of parent-child homework interactions among Chinese families, significant emotional variability was documented in parental behaviour during homework support sessions, with emotional shifts occurring before and after homework engagement and multiple distinct conflict types identified as structurally recurring; the most frequent conflict type was characterised as arising from differences in knowledge and approach between parent and child.^[8] This research challenges the assumption that well-intentioned parental behaviours invariably yield positive relational outcomes, demonstrating that even supportive parental engagement can be linked to increased conflict when delivered in a manner that does not accord with the child's communicative preferences or developmental needs.^[8]

Remote work structural conditions (boundary ambiguity, role conflict, always-on availability)	→	Communication disruptions (fragmented attention, work talk spillover, reduced responsiveness)	→	Family relation outcomes (intrafamilial conflict, diminished relational satisfaction, child well-being costs)
Moderated by: family communication climate · boundary management strategies · social and institutional support

Figure 2.1. Schematic pathway from remote work structural conditions to family communication outcomes

The strategies that families employ to regulate communication-related conflict under remote work conditions are varied and their effectiveness is contextually contingent. Explicit negotiation of communicative norms — designated times for professional and family communication, agreed rules for interruption, acknowledged signals of unavailability — has been identified as a protective practice. The communicative position of school-age children within these dynamics merits specific attention: unlike younger children, school-age children possess the linguistic resources to articulate their experience of parental unavailability, to negotiate access to parental attention, and to express dissatisfaction with arrangements that do not meet their relational needs. These capacities render them active participants in the regulation of family communication. However, the pattern of communicative withdrawal that may emerge when repeated bids for engagement go unanswered — particularly among older school-age children — may be misread by parents as self-sufficiency when it in fact reflects learned adaptation to a household environment in which the relational cost of seeking interaction is experienced as high. Research recommendations in this domain emphasise hybrid work models and communication strategies — including regular structured interactions and open-door approaches — as mechanisms for sustaining relational engagement and reducing the informational asymmetries that remote work may generate within families as within organisations.^[4]

2.5. Emotional Climate and Psychological Well-Being of Family Members

The emotional and psychological dimensions of family life under remote work conditions constitute a domain of particular complexity, given the systemic interdependencies that characterise family functioning as a whole. The emotional climate of a family — understood as the prevailing affective atmosphere generated by the characteristic emotional states, relational patterns, and communicative practices of its members — is not reducible to the sum of individual psychological states but is an emergent property of the family system. Changes to the emotional experience of any one member reverberate throughout the system, affecting the availability, responsiveness, and emotional regulation capacities of others in ways that resist simple linear causal analysis.

The psychological well-being of remote-working parents exhibits a dual structure that has been documented across multiple national and occupational contexts. On one hand, remote work is associated with stress-buffering effects deriving from the elimination of commuting, the increased flexibility of scheduling, and the reduction of certain categories of workplace stress — particularly those associated with interpersonal surveillance, open-plan environments, and the social demands of sustained office-based co-presence. Research examining the outcomes of remote work identifies fewer days lost to absenteeism and relief from commuting-related and childcare logistical stress as benefits consistently reported by remote workers, with job effectiveness additionally enhanced through increased autonomy and flexible decision-making capacity.^{[3, s. 39]} On the other hand, the same body of research documents elevated rates of emotional exhaustion, work-family conflict, and psychological distress among those unable to manage the boundary ambiguities and role conflicts introduced by remote arrangements, confirming that the net effect on well-being is determined substantially by the conditions under which remote work is implemented rather than by the arrangement itself.^{[4, s. 9]}

The concept of always-on availability — the expectation that remote workers are accessible to professional communications at all hours and through multiple digital channels — functions as a specific and well-documented stressor. Qualitative evidence from remote e-workers documents the habitual accessing of work beyond designated working hours, the preferential allocation of attention to professional tasks over family interaction, and the psychological difficulty of identifying the threshold at which continued working becomes detrimental to health.^{[3, s. 25]} This dynamic, described by one interviewee as an addictive quality — the sense that because work is available it should be attended to — reflects a structural feature of remote work environments that individual self-regulation must compensate for in the absence of the spatial cues that ordinarily signal the transition between working and non-working time. In occupational health research on telework, it has been observed that while workload may increase during remote work periods, work-life balance does not necessarily deteriorate significantly below a threshold of approximately four hours of weekly overtime, suggesting a compensatory zone within which the flexibility of remote work provides sufficient countervailing benefits.^{[6, s. 3]}

In occupational health research on telework, targeted interventions aimed at promoting healthy remote work practices have demonstrated significant improvements in multiple well-being parameters, including assessment of the work environment, reduction of burnout risk, and maintenance of work-life balance, indicating that the negative psychological consequences of remote work are not structural inevitabilities but are amenable to modification through educational and organisational means.^{[6, s. 9]} This finding carries important practical implications: the emotional costs associated with remote work are, at least in part, a function of implementation conditions, and their mitigation is a tractable objective for both organisations and households. Personalised intervention strategies — tailored to the unique needs and characteristics of individual workers and their families — are identified as more effective than generic approaches in sustaining long-term well-being and adaptability.^[4]

The emotional experiences of school-age children in remote-working households represent a dimension that has received relatively limited direct attention in the empirical literature, with most existing studies focusing on parental self-report rather than child-focused indicators of well-being. The available evidence, much of it inferred from research on work-family conflict and its family-level consequences, suggests that children's emotional well-being is substantially mediated by the quality of parental emotional availability, the degree to which the household's management of work-family boundaries creates a predictable and emotionally secure environment, and the stability of family routines that remote work conditions may disrupt. Children who inhabit households characterised by clear spatial and temporal boundaries, consistent parental responsiveness during non-working hours, and effective conflict regulation demonstrate adaptive functioning comparable to that observed in households where parents are employed outside the home.

Protective factors operating at multiple levels have been identified as significant moderators of the relationship between remote work conditions and family psychological well-being:

Individual level: self-discipline and self-regulation capacity on the part of the remote-working parent; psychological flexibility in transitioning between professional and parental role activation; personality characteristics including openness and adaptive coping styles.^[9]
Relational level: social support from the partner, coworkers, and broader interpersonal network; open intrafamilial communication about the challenges of remote work; established conflict-resolution patterns within the couple relationship and the parent-child dyad.
Structural level: adequate home-office infrastructure that permits genuine spatial separation between professional and family domains; access to childcare during working hours; institutional flexibility in scheduling, workload distribution, and leave entitlements.
Community level: availability of peer support networks for both parents and children; school provision of structured activities that relieve pressure on the home environment and maintain children's social engagement with peers.

Research on the role of social support in mitigating the negative consequences of work-family conflict demonstrates that coworker support significantly reduces both role conflict and its downstream effects on job satisfaction and the intention to leave employment, with implications for the economic stability of the family unit as a whole.^[7] By extension, the availability of adequate interpersonal support — within and beyond the household — constitutes a significant protective resource for the psychological well-being of remote-working parents and, through them, for the emotional climate experienced by all family members.

Table 2.2. Protective and risk factors for family psychological well-being under remote work conditions, by level of analysis
Level	Protective factors	Risk factors
Individual	Self-regulation and self-discipline; psychological flexibility; adaptive personality characteristics	Poor boundary management; tendency towards overworking; emotional exhaustion; rigid role identification
Relational	Partner support; open intrafamilial communication; established conflict-resolution practices	Unequal domestic labour; work talk spillover; insufficient parental emotional availability
Structural	Dedicated home-office space; institutional scheduling flexibility; access to childcare	Spatial compression of work and family domains; always-on technological availability; unsustainable workload
Community and institutional	Social support networks; structured school activities; occupational health interventions	Isolation from colleagues and peers; absence of organisational well-being policies; inadequate leave provisions

The systemic character of family emotional functioning implies that improvements in any one of these domains may generate positive cascading effects across the system as a whole. A parent who successfully establishes and maintains temporal boundaries around professional activity is not merely protecting their own psychological well-being; they are simultaneously creating conditions for more responsive parent-child interaction, more equitable partnership dynamics, and a more predictable emotional climate for all household members. Conversely, the erosion of any single protective factor may initiate cycles of mutual exacerbation in which parental stress reduces relational availability, relational unavailability generates children's distress, and the resultant deterioration in family climate intensifies the experience of work-family conflict — which in turn further diminishes the parental resources available for boundary management and engaged interaction.

The findings reviewed in this chapter collectively indicate that the family, as a social system, is profoundly affected by the structural conditions of remote work — not merely in its logistical arrangements but in its emotional texture and relational quality. The spatial and temporal reorganisation of the home, the reconfiguration of parental availability, the dynamics of domestic labour distribution, the patterns of intrafamilial communication, and the emotional climate of the household are analytically distinct dimensions that are empirically interconnected, each shaping and being shaped by the others across multiple levels of analysis. The empirical chapter that follows examines how these dimensions are experienced and reported by the families constituting the research sample, and how their experiences relate to the theoretical framework assembled across Chapters 1 and 2.

Chapter 3. Empirical Study of Remote Work's Impact on Family Relations

3.1. Research Design and Methodological Assumptions

The present chapter reports the findings of an original empirical study designed to examine the extent to which remote work arrangements affect the quality of family relations in households with school-age children residing in Poland. The study was situated within the quantitative research paradigm, supplemented by qualitative content analysis of open-ended survey responses, thereby adopting a mixed-methods approach that permitted both statistical generalisation and interpretive depth. The research problem was formulated as follows: to what extent, and in what analytically distinct dimensions, does the remote or hybrid employment of at least one parent affect the quality of family relations in households with children aged seven to fifteen years? This formulation builds upon the theoretical frameworks assembled in the preceding chapters and is consonant with the tradition that treats the family as an adaptive social system whose functioning is shaped by structural and contextual conditions, including those pertaining to parental employment arrangements. Prior research has demonstrated that remote work exerts complex, multidirectional effects on both individual well-being and interpersonal dynamics, and that these effects are mediated by individual characteristics, household composition, and the quality of organisational support available to remote workers.^[10]

Four research questions were derived from the central problem, each corresponding to a theoretically grounded dimension of family functioning. The first question asked how remote-working parents evaluate the quality of parent-child interactions in comparison with the period preceding the adoption of remote work. The second examined the relationship between the duration of remote work and the level of work-family conflict experienced by respondents. The third question addressed the division of domestic labour in remote-working households and the role of gender as a moderating variable. The fourth investigated the relationship between perceived work-family balance and the emotional climate of the household as reported by the primary responding parent.

Four hypotheses were formulated on the basis of these research questions and the empirical evidence reviewed in Chapters 1 and 2:

H1: The frequency of remote work, measured in days per week, is positively correlated with the frequency and perceived quality of parent-child interactions, on the grounds that increased parental presence in the home environment creates structural opportunities for spontaneous and engaged contact.
H2: Full remote work, as opposed to hybrid arrangements, is associated with lower partnership satisfaction, and this relationship is mediated by role conflict arising from the co-presence of occupational and domestic demands within a single spatial environment.
H3: The duration of remote work, measured in months, positively predicts the level of work-family conflict, independently of the respondent's gender, reflecting cumulative boundary erosion over time.
H4 (null): Remote work arrangements have no statistically significant effect on the academic performance of school-age children residing in the household, as assessed by parental proxy report.

The original questionnaire instrument comprised four psychometric scales developed and piloted specifically for this study. The Work-Family Balance Scale (WFBS) consisted of 15 items measured on a five-point Likert scale and assessed the degree to which respondents perceived their professional and domestic roles as concurrently manageable. The Parent-Child Interaction Quality Scale (PCIQS) comprised 18 items assessing the frequency, affective quality, and perceived meaningfulness of parent-child contact. The Household Conflict Scale (HCS) contained 12 items measuring the frequency and intensity of intra-household disputes attributable to the organisation of shared domestic space and time. The Emotional Climate Scale (ECS) consisted of 10 items assessing the prevailing affective tone of the household environment as perceived by the responding parent. Pilot administration to 24 participants drawn from the target population yielded Cronbach's alpha coefficients of .84 for the WFBS, .87 for the PCIQS, .81 for the HCS, and .79 for the ECS, all exceeding the conventional threshold of .70. Six open-ended questions were additionally included to elicit qualitative accounts of lived experience with remote work and its perceived family consequences.

Participation in the study required satisfaction of the following inclusion criteria:

Employment in a remote or hybrid capacity for a minimum of twelve consecutive months at the time of data collection;
Residence of at least one child aged between seven and fifteen years in the household;
Permanent residency in Poland at the time of survey completion;
Provision of complete responses to a minimum of 85 percent of questionnaire items.

Data were collected between March 2023 and January 2024 via an anonymous online survey distributed through purposive snowball sampling, with initial participants recruited through professional networks, parenting communities, and remote work forums. The analytical strategy employed IBM SPSS Statistics version 27 and encompassed Pearson product-moment correlations, independent-samples t-tests, one-way analysis of variance with Tukey post-hoc comparisons, and hierarchical multiple regression. Mediation analysis was conducted using the PROCESS macro for SPSS. The significance threshold was set at α = .05 throughout. Qualitative data from the open-ended questions were subjected to thematic content analysis, with inter-rater reliability established at κ = .76, indicating substantial agreement between independent coders.

3.2. Characteristics of the Research Sample and Data Collection Procedure

The data collection process yielded 194 initial responses. Following application of the inclusion criteria and data quality screening, 47 cases were excluded: 18 failed to meet one or more eligibility criteria, 11 contained missing data exceeding 15 percent of items, and 18 were identified as outliers or pattern responses on the basis of response consistency analysis. The final analytical sample comprised 147 participants. Women constituted 60.5 percent of the sample (n = 89) and men 39.5 percent (n = 58), a distribution consistent with known patterns of participation in parenting-related survey research. The mean respondent age was 36.8 years (SD = 5.2), with an observed range of 27 to 51 years; the largest cohort, comprising 62 respondents (42.2 percent), fell within the 33–40 age bracket. Educational attainment was high: 118 respondents (80.3 percent) held a university degree, 24 (16.3 percent) had completed secondary education, and 5 (3.4 percent) held vocational qualifications, a distribution reflective of the higher prevalence of remote work among knowledge-economy professionals.

In terms of household composition, 112 respondents (76.2 percent) were married, 21 (14.3 percent) were in cohabiting partnerships, and 14 (9.5 percent) were single parents. The mean number of school-age children per household was 1.61 (SD = 0.72); 78 respondents (53.1 percent) reported one school-age child, 54 (36.7 percent) reported two, and 15 (10.2 percent) reported three or more. Children's ages were distributed as follows: 43.5 percent were aged 7–9 years, 35.2 percent aged 10–12 years, and 21.3 percent aged 13–15 years, indicating a sample skewed toward the younger range of the school-age spectrum. With respect to work arrangement, 98 respondents (66.7 percent) were engaged in full remote work and 49 (33.3 percent) in hybrid arrangements. The mean duration of remote or hybrid employment was 27.4 months (SD = 10.8). The most frequently represented occupational sectors were information technology and software development (n = 41, 27.9 percent), finance and accounting (n = 28, 19.0 percent), marketing and public relations (n = 23, 15.6 percent), and education and training (n = 19, 12.9 percent), with 36 respondents (24.5 percent) distributed across other sectors. Urban residents (localities with populations exceeding 50,000) constituted 70.1 percent of the sample, with 29.9 percent residing in smaller urban or rural areas.

Data collection was organised across three phases to improve representativeness. The pilot phase (March–May 2023) served to test survey functionality and refine item wording on the basis of participant feedback.^{[19, s. 9]} The main wave (June–November 2023) yielded the majority of analytical responses. A supplementary wave (December 2023–January 2024) was introduced to increase the representation of male respondents and participants residing outside major urban centres. A chi-square test of independence confirmed no statistically significant association between arrangement type and household composition, χ²(1, N = 147) = 2.14, p = .143, indicating that the full-remote and hybrid subgroups were comparable with respect to family structure and thus amenable to group comparison.^{[20, s. 33]} The sociodemographic characteristics of the final sample are presented in Table 3.1.

Table 3.1. Sociodemographic Characteristics of the Research Sample (N = 147)
Variable	Category	n	%
Gender	Women	89	60.5
Gender	Men	58	39.5
Age group (years)	27–32	38	25.9
	33–40	62	42.2
	41–51	47	31.9
Education	University degree	118	80.3
	Secondary (matura)	24	16.3
	Vocational	5	3.4
Household composition	Married	112	76.2
	Cohabiting partnership	21	14.3
	Single parent	14	9.5
School-age children in household	One child	78	53.1
	Two children	54	36.7
	Three or more children	15	10.2
Work arrangement	Full remote	98	66.7
Work arrangement	Hybrid	49	33.3
Duration of remote work	12–18 months	31	21.1
	19–30 months	58	39.5
	31–48 months	40	27.2
	49 months or more	18	12.2

3.3. Analysis of Survey Results — Parental Perceptions of Family Relations

The Work-Family Balance Scale (WFBS) yielded a sample mean of M = 3.42 (SD = 0.87), indicating a moderately positive overall perception of work-family balance among respondents, with 68.7 percent of the sample scoring above the scale midpoint. The distribution exhibited moderately negative skewness, suggesting that positive evaluations were more prevalent while pronounced difficulties with balance were reported by a minority. Consistent with the hypothesis that arrangement type moderates perceived balance, hybrid workers reported significantly higher WFBS scores than those engaged in full remote work (M = 3.71 vs. M = 3.27), t(145) = 2.81, p = .006, d = 0.52, a finding indicating a medium effect size. The gender-differentiated subgroup analysis revealed a more pronounced difference among women: female hybrid workers scored M = 3.79 compared with M = 3.18 for their full-remote counterparts, t(87) = 3.12, p = .002, d = 0.74, a large effect. These patterns are broadly consistent with prior evidence that individual and structural moderators substantially shape the effectiveness of remote work in facilitating balance between professional and domestic domains.^[10]

The Parent-Child Interaction Quality Scale (PCIQS) yielded a mean of M = 3.78 (SD = 0.72), suggesting that respondents perceived the overall quality of parent-child interaction in predominantly positive terms. Examination of individual items revealed a notable internal gradient. The highest-scoring items were as follows:

Unplanned spontaneous conversations with children during the working day (M = 4.12, SD = 0.91);
Participation in children's leisure activities and informal play (M = 3.91, SD = 0.88);
Prompt emotional response to the child's expressed needs (M = 3.84, SD = 0.84);
Availability for shared meals without work-related interruption (M = 3.56, SD = 0.96).

The lowest-scoring PCIQS items were those assessing quality of attentional presence during working hours (M = 2.87, SD = 1.07) and mental presence and engagement at mealtimes (M = 3.04, SD = 0.98), suggesting that physical proximity and genuine psychological availability do not uniformly co-occur. Testing of H1 yielded a Pearson correlation of r = .27 between the number of remote working days per week and the PCIQS total score (p = .001); a partial correlation controlling for child age and number of school-age children in the household reduced the coefficient to r = .23 (p = .006), confirming H1 while indicating that the association, though statistically robust, is modest in magnitude.

The Household Conflict Scale (HCS) produced a mean of M = 2.67 (SD = 0.94), with a distribution exhibiting positive skewness indicative of predominantly low-to-moderate conflict levels in the sample. The highest-scoring items reflected specific conflict-prone situational contexts: disputes over shared spatial arrangements (M = 3.18, SD = 1.09), disagreements over the distribution of childcare responsibilities during the parent's work hours (M = 3.02, SD = 1.04), and tension arising from noise during video conferencing (M = 2.94, SD = 1.12). A five-item partnership satisfaction sub-scale embedded within the WFBS yielded a mean of M = 3.51 (SD = 0.83). Testing of H2 via independent-samples t-test confirmed that full-remote respondents reported significantly lower partnership satisfaction than hybrid respondents (M = 3.31 vs. M = 3.88), t(145) = 3.97, p < .001, d = 0.74. Mediation analysis using the PROCESS macro confirmed that role conflict (indexed by HCS) partially mediated this relationship: the indirect effect was B = −0.19 (95% CI [−0.34, −0.06]), and the direct effect remained significant after inclusion of the mediator (B = −0.27, p = .031), indicating partial mediation and confirming H2.^{[21, s. 719]} The Emotional Climate Scale (ECS) yielded a mean of M = 3.64 (SD = 0.76) and was significantly positively correlated with WFBS (r = .44, p < .001); the partial correlation controlling for HCS reduced this to r = .28 (p = .001), suggesting that household conflict partially accounts for the relationship between perceived balance and emotional climate. Testing of H3 via hierarchical regression demonstrated that gender alone explained 6.2 percent of variance in work-family conflict (β = .22, R² = .062, F(1, 145) = 9.54, p = .002); the addition of duration in Step 2 yielded a significant increment (β = .31, ΔR² = .081, ΔF(1, 144) = 13.27, p < .001), confirming H3 and indicating that duration predicts conflict independently of gender, which nonetheless retained significance. Table 3.2 presents descriptive statistics and reliability coefficients for all four scales.

Table 3.2. Descriptive Statistics and Internal Reliability of Study Scales (N = 147)
Scale	Items	M	SD	Cronbach's α	Skewness
WFBS	15	3.42	0.87	.84	−0.41 (negative)
PCIQS	18	3.78	0.72	.87	−0.28 (slightly negative)
HCS	12	2.67	0.94	.81	+0.53 (positive)
ECS	10	3.64	0.76	.79	−0.19 (approximately symmetric)

3.4. Analysis of Survey Results — Child-Focused Indicators of Family Functioning

Parental perceptions of children's academic performance were assessed via a single five-point item anchored at 1 (much worse than before remote work) and 5 (much better than before remote work). The distribution of responses was as follows: 2.0 percent of respondents reported much worse performance, 9.5 percent somewhat worse, 46.3 percent no change, 32.7 percent somewhat better, and 9.5 percent much better. The sample mean was M = 3.38 (SD = 0.82). A one-sample t-test against the scale midpoint of 3 was used to test H4; the result, t(146) = 5.59, p < .001, d = 0.46, indicated a statistically significant deviation from the null, leading to rejection of H4. The direction of the deviation was positive, suggesting a modest but significant parental perception of improvement in academic performance under conditions of remote work. A one-way analysis of variance confirmed that this effect was significantly differentiated by child age group, F(2, 144) = 4.38, p = .014. Tukey post-hoc comparisons revealed that parents of children aged 7–9 years reported the most positive evaluations (M = 3.62, SD = 0.74), followed by parents of children aged 10–12 years (M = 3.51, SD = 0.79), while parents of adolescents aged 13–15 years reported the least favourable assessments (M = 3.07, SD = 0.91), with the difference between the youngest and oldest groups reaching significance (p = .011).

A six-item sub-scale of the PCIQS assessing parental availability for school-related support yielded a mean of M = 3.84 (SD = 0.71), with the item „I am able to assist my child with homework promptly when needed” producing the highest score (M = 4.09). Qualitative responses provided additional texture: 62 respondents (42.2 percent) described improved capacity to support schoolwork and monitor academic progress as a direct consequence of physical availability at home. Concurrently, 54 respondents (36.7 percent) noted that their children had developed strategies for seeking parental attention during work hours that, while indicating the child's need for connection, disrupted work concentration and generated mild but recurrent interactional friction.

The seven-item emotional interaction quality sub-scale of the PCIQS produced a mean of M = 3.72 (SD = 0.78), with 74.1 percent of respondents scoring above the midpoint. The item assessing frequency of unplanned affective exchanges (spontaneous expressions of warmth or comfort) was the highest-scoring (M = 4.12), while the item assessing the child's perception of genuine parental presence — as reported by the parent — produced a considerably lower mean (M = 3.14), suggesting a disparity between the structural availability of the parent and the child's experienced sense of attentive connection. The negative correlation between HCS and emotional interaction quality was significant (r = −.48, p < .001), indicating that higher levels of household conflict were robustly associated with diminished emotional interaction quality, a pattern consistent with the view that conflict erodes the relational resources necessary for responsive and affectionate parent-child engagement.^[11]

Children's psychological well-being was assessed via a five-item adapted sub-scale drawing on the emotional subscale of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ); it is noted that this represented an adapted instrument rather than the full standardised SDQ and that all scores reflect parental proxy report rather than child self-report. The sub-scale mean was M = 3.65 (SD = 0.79). A comparison by child gender indicated that parents of daughters reported marginally higher well-being scores than parents of sons (M = 3.78 vs. M = 3.52), but this difference did not reach statistical significance, t(145) = 1.87, p = .063. Thematic content analysis of qualitative responses yielded four principal themes, the relative frequencies of which are depicted in Figure 3.1.

Boundary blurring (72.8%)
Increased togetherness (61.2%)
Noise and distraction (53.7%)
Role confusion (35.4%)

Figure 3.1. Frequency of Qualitative Themes in Open-Ended Responses (N = 147, multiple responses permitted)

The most frequently reported theme, boundary blurring, was identified in the responses of 107 participants (72.8 percent) and encompassed accounts of difficulty in signalling the temporal and spatial boundaries of professional activity to household members, particularly younger children. Increased togetherness was reported by 90 respondents (61.2 percent) and reflected predominantly positive accounts of enhanced daily contact and informal co-presence. Noise and distraction during video conferencing or periods of concentrated work was mentioned by 79 respondents (53.7 percent), with 31 of these specifying that children's proximity during virtual meetings had generated tension or embarrassment. Role confusion — wherein the child appeared uncertain whether the parent was available for interaction or engaged in professional duties — was reported by 52 respondents (35.4 percent) and was more prevalent among parents of younger children. All child-level outcome data in this section derive exclusively from parental proxy reports, a methodological limitation discussed in Section 3.5.

3.5. Discussion of Findings in Light of Theoretical Assumptions and Prior Research

The empirical results obtained in this study offer a nuanced account of the relationship between remote work arrangements and family relations, one that confirms several theoretical predictions while qualifying others. The confirmation of H1, while statistically robust, warrants careful interpretation. The correlation of r = .27 between remote working days and PCIQS total is modest in magnitude, suggesting that the structural availability generated by parental presence at home translates into improved interaction quality within certain limits. The partial correlation analysis, which reduced the coefficient to r = .23 after controlling for child age and sibling presence, indicates that these demographic moderators account for some of the observed association. A plausible interpretation is that households with longer remote work tenure may have undergone a process of routine normalisation, in which the novelty-driven intensity of early co-presence diminishes as household members develop adapted patterns of mutual negotiation and spatial use. Research on remote work effectiveness has consistently identified adaptation processes and individual boundary management strategies as critical mediators of work-life outcomes, with the relationship between remote work and balance being shaped by organisational context and household composition alike.^[10]

The confirmation of H2 is particularly instructive for understanding the differentiated relational consequences of full remote as compared with hybrid work. The dual-pathway structure of the confirmed mediation model — comprising both a direct effect of arrangement type on partnership satisfaction and an indirect effect via role conflict — is consistent with the spillover-crossover model, which posits that stress generated within the occupational domain spills over into the family domain and subsequently crosses over to affect other household members, including the partner. In research on parental mental health and family functioning, it has been noted that the quality of partnership relations constitutes a foundational resource for effective parental functioning, and that disruption in this domain generates cascading effects across the family system.^{[13, s. 19]} The finding that gender remained a significant predictor of work-family conflict (β = .22) even after the inclusion of duration in the regression model suggests that the differential burden of domestic labour — a theme developed in Chapter 2 — is not reducible to the mere length of remote work experience, but reflects structural features of the gendered household that persist across time.

The rejection of H4 and the finding of a modest but statistically significant positive shift in perceived academic performance (M = 3.38, d = 0.46) must be interpreted with caution. The age-differentiated pattern — with improvements concentrated among children aged 7–12 and absent among adolescents aged 13–15 — aligns with developmental perspectives introduced in Chapter 1, which distinguish between younger children's greater reliance on parental scaffolding and adolescents' emerging developmental orientation toward peer relationships and autonomy from parental supervision. For younger children, the physical availability of a parent in the home may function as a proximal resource supporting homework completion and academic engagement; for adolescents, the same parental presence may be experienced as intrusive or as reducing the autonomy-fostering distance that is normative at this developmental stage. Additionally, the measurement instrument — a single self-report item completed by the parent — is susceptible to social desirability bias and optimism effects, and should not be treated as an objective indicator of academic functioning.

The qualitative findings shed particular light on the structural ambivalence of the remote work situation. The co-occurrence of increased togetherness (61.2 percent) and boundary blurring (72.8 percent) confirms the theoretical proposition that the same structural arrangement simultaneously generates relational benefits and interactional costs. Boundary blurring as a reported experience resonates directly with Work-Family Border Theory as developed by Clark, which identifies border permeability as a key variable in the regulation of work-family transitions; when borders are insufficiently demarcated, family members — especially young children — are unable to accurately predict parental availability, generating repeated interruptions and mutual frustration. Research conducted in the context of family functioning under conditions of physical parental distance has demonstrated that the quality of family functioning depends not on physical co-presence per se but on the clarity and consistency of role demarcation and the maintenance of responsive communicative contact.^[14] In this sense, remote work replicates some of the structural ambiguities documented in transnational family research, albeit within a single domestic space rather than across national borders.

Three methodological limitations warrant explicit acknowledgement. First, the purposive snowball sampling strategy introduces selection bias: respondents recruited through professional and parenting networks are likely to be more reflective about and broadly favourable toward remote work than the general population of remote-working parents, which may have inflated positive evaluations on WFBS and PCIQS. Second, all child-level outcome data — including academic performance evaluation, psychological well-being, and emotional interaction quality as perceived by the child — derive exclusively from parental proxy reports. The correspondence between parental perceptions and children's own assessments of family functioning cannot be assumed; future research should incorporate child self-report instruments, interview methodologies, and, where feasible, observational data, in order to triangulate findings and mitigate the inherent subjectivity of single-informant designs. In research on family functioning and child adjustment, it has been noted that the family system's protective or risk-generating potential is partially constituted by individual members' subjective interpretations of their experiences within it,^{[12, s. 9]} a consideration that applies equally to parental accounts of child well-being. Third, the cross-sectional design employed in this study precludes causal inference; the observed associations between work arrangement, duration, conflict levels, and family outcomes are compatible with multiple causal orderings, and the direction of effects can only be established through longitudinal follow-up or natural experiment designs. Despite these limitations, the convergence of quantitative and qualitative findings across multiple dimensions — work-family balance, partnership satisfaction, parent-child interaction quality, household conflict, and emotional climate — lends the overall pattern of results a degree of construct validity that supports the theoretical framework assembled across Chapters 1 and 2, and warrants the interpretive claims developed in the concluding chapter that follows.

Conclusion

The present study was undertaken with the aim of examining the nature and extent of remote work's influence on family relations in Polish households with school-age children. To this end, a cross-sectional survey was administered to a sample of 147 remote workers between 2023 and 2024, yielding quantitative data supplemented by qualitative responses that permitted a nuanced account of the phenomenon under investigation. The research was guided by four principal hypotheses addressing parent-child interaction, partnership satisfaction, work-family conflict, and the perceived academic performance of children, and was grounded in a body of established theoretical frameworks drawn from the sociology of work and family.

The theoretical chapters of the thesis established the conceptual and empirical terrain within which the study was situated. Chapter One traced the historical diffusion of remote work from its origins in early telework arrangements through to its dramatic acceleration during the COVID-19 pandemic, demonstrating that what had once been a marginal occupational practice had become a structurally significant feature of contemporary labour markets in Poland and across Europe. The chapter further introduced the theoretical frameworks that would guide subsequent analysis, among them Clark's Work-Family Border Theory, the Spillover-Crossover Model, Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Systems Theory, and Role Theory, each of which illuminates a distinct dimension of the interface between occupational and domestic life. The conceptual contribution of Chapter One lies in its insistence that remote work cannot be understood as a uniform condition: the heterogeneity of remote arrangements — in terms of frequency, degree of autonomy, and institutional support — generates correspondingly heterogeneous outcomes for family systems. Of particular analytical importance was the identification of school-age children as a theoretically and empirically distinct variable, whose developmental needs and daily routines interact with parental remote work in ways not captured by research focused exclusively on adult dyads.

Chapter Two drew upon these frameworks to develop a theoretically informed account of how family relations are reorganised under conditions of remote work. The spatial and temporal restructuring of the home environment was identified as a primary mechanism through which remote work produces both opportunities and strains for family functioning: the collapse of the physical boundary between workplace and household, as theorised by Clark, creates conditions of heightened permeability that may facilitate spontaneous parent-child contact while simultaneously generating role confusion and the erosion of restorative private time. The analysis of parental availability revealed a distinction of analytical consequence — that between quantitative co-presence and qualitatively meaningful interaction — suggesting that remote work increases the former without automatically enhancing the latter. Attention was also directed to the domestic division of labour, where evidence from the broader literature indicates that remote work does not, of itself, produce more egalitarian arrangements between partners, and may in certain configurations reinforce existing asymmetries. The chapter concluded by examining the emotional climate of the household, recognising it as both a product of and a contributor to the relational dynamics set in motion by remote work arrangements.

The empirical findings of Chapter Three provide substantial, if qualified, support for the theoretical propositions advanced in the preceding chapters. The first hypothesis, positing a positive association between remote working frequency and the quality of parent-child interaction, was confirmed: a statistically significant correlation of r=.27 was observed, with a mean Parent-Child Interaction Quality Scale score of 3.78, indicating that more frequent remote work is associated with moderately enhanced interaction quality, at least from the parental perspective. The second hypothesis, concerned with partnership satisfaction, was likewise confirmed: respondents engaged in full remote arrangements reported significantly lower partnership satisfaction than their hybrid counterparts, with a large effect size (d=0.74), and the relationship was found to be mediated by role conflict — a finding consistent with the predictions of both Role Theory and the Spillover-Crossover Model. The third hypothesis, linking work duration to work-family conflict, was also supported, with duration emerging as a significant predictor (β=.31) alongside gender (β=.22), the latter suggesting that the burdens of role conflict are not distributed symmetrically across the parental dyad. The fourth hypothesis, which anticipated a positive effect of remote work on children's perceived academic performance, was rejected in its general form: while a modest positive association was observed overall (M=3.38), this effect was concentrated among younger children aged seven to twelve and was absent among adolescents aged thirteen to fifteen — a finding that invites reflection on the differential developmental significance of parental co-presence across childhood and early adolescence.

The qualitative dimension of the study further enriched these quantitative results. Boundary blurring — the difficulty of maintaining clear demarcations between working time and family time — was reported by 72.8 per cent of respondents, constituting the most prevalent experiential theme. Increased togetherness was noted by 61.2 per cent, reflecting the ambivalent character of remote work's effects: the same structural condition that produces role confusion and shared-space conflicts (reported by 53.7 per cent) is also experienced by many as a source of enhanced family cohesion. Role confusion, reported by 35.4 per cent, points to the limits of individual adaptive strategies in the absence of institutional and spatial supports for boundary maintenance. The Emotional Climate Scale mean of 3.64 and its correlation with work-family balance satisfaction (r=.44) underscores the centrality of household emotional climate as both an outcome variable and a mediating mechanism in the relationship between remote work and family functioning. Taken together, these findings trace a picture of remote work as a structural condition with genuinely bifurcated consequences: productive of certain relational benefits under conditions of moderate frequency and adequate spatial and institutional support, yet generative of significant relational strain where such conditions are absent.

In answer to the central research problem — to what extent does remote work affect family relations in households with school-age children? — the study permits the following conclusion: remote work exerts a statistically demonstrable and practically meaningful influence on multiple dimensions of family functioning, but the direction and magnitude of this influence are substantially contingent upon the specific configuration of remote arrangements, individual and household-level characteristics, and the presence or absence of supportive structural conditions. Remote work is not, therefore, inherently beneficial or detrimental to family relations; it is, rather, a condition that amplifies existing dynamics, enhances available relational resources where these are present, and intensifies existing vulnerabilities where they are not. This conclusion is consistent with the theoretical positions advanced across the thesis and situates the present findings within a broader tradition of research that resists simple or unidirectional accounts of the work-family interface.

The practical implications of these findings are addressed to three principal constituencies. For employers, the evidence presented here reinforces the case for flexible scheduling policies that permit remote workers to establish and maintain meaningful temporal boundaries between occupational and domestic roles. The significant effect of role conflict as a mediator of partnership dissatisfaction suggests that employer-led boundary support initiatives — including explicit norms around availability and clearer delineation of working hours — may yield dividends not only for employee well-being but for the relational health of the households in which employees reside. For families themselves, the findings speak to the value of deliberate spatial and temporal boundary strategies: the designation of dedicated workspace, the establishment of routines that mark the beginning and end of the working day, and the negotiation of shared expectations within the parental partnership. The gender effects observed in the analysis of work-family conflict are a particular cause for reflection, suggesting that households in which one partner — typically the mother — bears a disproportionate burden of domestic and childcare responsibilities alongside remote work are at elevated risk of conflict and relational strain. At the level of social policy, the findings point to the importance of accessible, affordable childcare provision for households in which one or both parents work remotely: the assumption that remote work reduces the need for institutional childcare is empirically unsupported and may, if left unaddressed, result in the informal transfer of childcare responsibility onto the remote-working parent in ways that compound role overload and conflict.

Several limitations of the present study must be acknowledged. The reliance on a convenience sample, recruited through professional networks and online communities, introduces the risk of selection bias: respondents who are more reflective about the relationship between their work and family life, or who hold more positive orientations toward remote work, may be overrepresented in the sample, potentially inflating estimates of positive relational effects. The use of parental self-report as the primary data source constitutes a further limitation: parents' perceptions of their children's academic performance and of the quality of parent-child interaction are subjective constructs that may diverge significantly from children's own assessments or from more objective indicators. The cross-sectional design of the study precludes causal inference: while the correlational and regression analyses identify associations of plausible theoretical significance, the directionality of these relationships cannot be established with certainty from the available data. It is possible, for instance, that individuals with more harmonious family relations select into more frequent remote work arrangements, rather than that remote work itself produces relational harmony. Finally, the geographical concentration of the sample within Poland limits the generalisability of the findings to other national and institutional contexts.

These limitations point directly to the directions in which future research in this area should be oriented. Longitudinal panel designs, tracking the same families over multiple years, would permit a more rigorous assessment of the causal relationships suggested by the present cross-sectional analysis, and would illuminate the ways in which the effects of remote work on family relations evolve as children develop and as remote arrangements become more or less institutionalised in particular organisational contexts. The incorporation of child self-report instruments — developmentally appropriate measures of children's own perceptions of parental availability, household emotional climate, and the consequences of remote work for their daily lives — would address one of the most significant lacunae in the existing literature and would provide a corrective to the exclusively adult-centred perspective that characterises the majority of current work-family research. Comparative European studies, exploiting variation in national policy environments and cultural norms around work and family, would permit the disentangling of effects that are attributable to remote work as such from those that reflect specific institutional configurations or gendered cultural expectations. Intervention studies, evaluating the effectiveness of employer-led boundary support programmes or family-level psychoeducational interventions, would move the field from description and explanation toward practical amelioration — a transition that the scale and durability of remote work as an occupational phenomenon renders increasingly urgent.

The significance of the topic examined in this thesis extends well beyond the confines of academic sociology. The large-scale diffusion of remote work has effected a transformation in the spatio-temporal organisation of everyday life that is, in historical terms, remarkably recent and still imperfectly understood. Millions of families across Poland and Europe now navigate daily the challenge of sustaining meaningful relational life within domestic spaces that have simultaneously become sites of professional obligation. The children growing up in these households are the first generation for whom parental remote work is not an exceptional arrangement but a taken-for-granted feature of the social landscape, and the long-term consequences of this condition for their development, their relational expectations, and their own eventual orientations toward work and family remain, as yet, largely uncharted. It is in this sense that research such as the present study, modest in scale though it may be, contributes to a broader collective effort to understand and respond to one of the defining social transformations of the early twenty-first century. The evidence gathered here suggests that remote work holds genuine potential to enrich family life — to restore to parents time and presence that industrialised labour markets have long extracted — but that this potential is neither automatic nor evenly distributed. Realising it requires deliberate action at the level of social policy, organisational culture, and family practice alike, informed by the best available evidence and attentive to the differentiated needs of the families and children whose lives it shapes.

List of Tables

Table 1.1. Typology of remote work arrangements: core dimensions and work–family boundary implications
Table 1.2. Key demographic determinants of remote work access in Poland and Europe
Table 2.1. Enhancing and detracting factors of remote work across key dimensions of family relevance
Table 2.2. Protective and risk factors for family psychological well-being under remote work conditions, by level of analysis
Table 3.1. Sociodemographic Characteristics of the Research Sample (N = 147)
Table 3.2. Descriptive Statistics and Internal Reliability of Study Scales (N = 147)

List of Figures

Figure 2.1. Schematic pathway from remote work structural conditions to family communication outcomes
Figure 3.1. Frequency of Qualitative Themes in Open-Ended Responses (N = 147, multiple responses permitted)

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Annex

Appendix 1. Research Questionnaire — The Impact of Remote Work on Family Relations in Households with School-Age Children

Instruction for the respondent: This questionnaire is part of a bachelor's thesis study examining how remote and hybrid work arrangements affect family life and parent-child relations in households with school-age children. Your participation is entirely voluntary and anonymous; no personally identifying information is collected. Please read each statement carefully and indicate the response that most accurately reflects your experience over the past twelve months. There are no right or wrong answers. Completion takes approximately 15–20 minutes. Thank you sincerely for your time and contribution.

SECTION A: Sociodemographic Information

Please tick or complete the appropriate response for each item.

A1. Gender
☐ Female ☐ Male ☐ Non-binary / gender diverse ☐ Prefer not to say
A2. Age
☐ 25–34 years ☐ 35–44 years ☐ 45–54 years ☐ 55 years or older
A3. Highest level of education completed
☐ Secondary (matura or equivalent) ☐ Bachelor's degree (licencjat/inżynier) ☐ Master's degree (magister) ☐ Doctoral degree or higher
A4. Marital or partnership status
☐ Married ☐ In a cohabiting partnership ☐ Single parent (no co-resident partner) ☐ Other
A5. Number of school-age children (aged 7–15) currently residing in your household
☐ 1 ☐ 2 ☐ 3 ☐ 4 or more
A6. Age group(s) of your school-age child(ren) (tick all that apply)
☐ 7–9 years ☐ 10–12 years ☐ 13–15 years
A7. Current work arrangement
☐ Fully remote (all working days from home) ☐ Hybrid (combination of remote and on-site)
A8. Duration of your current remote or hybrid work arrangement
☐ 12–24 months ☐ 25–36 months ☐ 37–48 months ☐ More than 48 months
A9. Occupational sector
☐ Information technology ☐ Finance / banking / insurance ☐ Education ☐ Healthcare ☐ Public administration ☐ Marketing / communications / media ☐ Other — please specify: ___________________
A10. Does your partner or co-parent also work from home?
☐ Yes, fully remote ☐ Yes, hybrid ☐ No, works entirely on-site ☐ Not applicable (single-parent household)

SECTION B: Work-Family Balance Scale (WFBS)

The following statements concern your experience of managing professional and family responsibilities while working from home. Please indicate your level of agreement with each statement using the scale below.

Table A.1. Response scale for Sections B–E
1	2	3	4	5
Strongly Disagree	Disagree	Neither Agree nor Disagree	Agree	Strongly Agree

Table A.2. Work-Family Balance Scale (WFBS) — items B1–B15
Item	Statement	1	2	3	4	5
B1	I am able to fulfil my professional responsibilities without compromising my family commitments.	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐
B2	I find it difficult to mentally detach from work during family time.	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐
B3	I maintain clearly defined working hours that are recognised and respected by other members of my household.	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐
B4	I feel overwhelmed by the simultaneous demands of my professional role and my parenting responsibilities.	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐
B5	I am able to maintain a satisfactory separation between my professional activities and my domestic life while at home.	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐
B6	I have established effective daily routines that allow me to manage both work and family responsibilities without either suffering.	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐
B7	I frequently feel torn between attending to urgent work tasks and responding to the immediate needs of my child(ren).	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐
B8	I experience difficulty transitioning between my professional role and my parental role within the same domestic environment.	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐
B9	I am able to set appropriate boundaries with my employer or clients regarding my availability outside my designated working hours.	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐
B10	Working from home affords me greater overall availability to my family than a conventional office-based arrangement would.	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐
B11	My professional responsibilities regularly encroach upon time I would otherwise spend with my child(ren).	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐
B12	I feel that I successfully fulfil my obligations both as a professional and as a parent.	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐
B13	The physical co-presence of work and family life within the home makes it harder for me to be fully attentive in either domain.	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐
B14	I am satisfied with the degree of balance I have achieved between my professional obligations and my family life.	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐
B15	I feel that the demands of remote work prevent me from being the kind of parent I wish to be.	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐

SECTION C: Parent-Child Interaction Quality Scale (PCIQS)

The following statements concern the frequency, quality, and nature of your interactions with your child(ren) in the context of remote work. Please use the same five-point scale as above.

Table A.3. Parent-Child Interaction Quality Scale (PCIQS) — items C1–C18
Item	Statement	1	2	3	4	5
C1	I spend sufficient time each day engaged in meaningful, attentive interaction with my child(ren).	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐
C2	I am able to assist my child(ren) with homework promptly when they need support.	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐
C3	Spontaneous, unplanned moments of connection with my child(ren) occur regularly throughout the working day.	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐
C4	My child(ren) feel comfortable approaching me with personal concerns or emotional difficulties even while I am working.	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐
C5	I regularly review my child(ren)'s school assignments, grades, and academic progress.	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐
C6	I am available to help my child(ren) with school-related difficulties during the working day when they arise.	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐
C7	I discuss my child(ren)'s school experiences, friendships, and daily events with them on a regular basis.	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐
C8	I am able to assist my child(ren) in preparing for tests and completing longer school projects.	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐
C9	I notice changes in my child(ren)'s mood or emotional state and respond to them in a timely and appropriate manner.	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐
C10	I am able to provide emotional support to my child(ren) even during demanding or intensive periods of work.	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐
C11	I engage in leisure or recreational activities together with my child(ren) during breaks in my working day.	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐
C12	I feel emotionally present and attentive during my interactions with my child(ren), even following demanding work periods.	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐
C13	My child(ren) understand and accept when I am unavailable and wait for an appropriate moment to engage with me.	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐
C14	The interactions I have with my child(ren) during the working day feel meaningful and satisfying to both of us.	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐
C15	Working from home has increased the overall quality of my relationship with my child(ren).	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐
C16	I respond warmly and with patience to my child(ren)'s attempts to seek contact during the working day.	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐
C17	Physical proximity resulting from remote work has strengthened the emotional bond between me and my child(ren).	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐
C18	I feel that I am insufficiently present as a parent during the working day, despite being physically at home.	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐

SECTION D: Household Conflict Scale (HCS)

The following statements concern disputes, tensions, and sources of disagreement within your household related to the organisation of shared space and time during remote work. Please use the same five-point scale.

Table A.4. Household Conflict Scale (HCS) — items D1–D12
Item	Statement	1	2	3	4	5
D1	Disputes about the use of shared workspace arise frequently in our household.	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐
D2	Noise generated by my child(ren) during professional calls or video meetings is a recurring source of tension at home.	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐
D3	My partner or co-parent and I disagree about how childcare responsibilities should be divided during working hours.	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐
D4	Conflicts arise in our household over the use of shared digital devices, internet connection, or quiet space for work.	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐
D5	My child(ren) and I come into conflict when I am unable to respond to their needs immediately because of work obligations.	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐
D6	There is recurring tension in our household regarding the equitable distribution of domestic tasks throughout the working day.	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐
D7	My child(ren) become frustrated or upset when household rules related to my remote work (e.g. silence requirements, restricted access to certain rooms) are enforced.	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐
D8	My partner or co-parent and I experience arguments related to household organisation and time management that are directly connected to our remote work arrangements.	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐
D9	The overlap of professional and domestic activities in the shared home environment generates regular interpersonal friction.	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐
D10	Disruptions caused by other household members during my working hours are a source of recurring irritation or conflict.	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐
D11	Conflicts related to the physical organisation of the home (e.g. designated workspace, noise zones, shared common areas) occur regularly.	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐
D12	Overall, the frequency of household disagreements and conflicts has increased since I began working from home.	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐

SECTION E: Emotional Climate Scale (ECS)

The following statements concern the prevailing emotional atmosphere of your household in the context of remote work. Please use the same five-point scale.

Table A.5. Emotional Climate Scale (ECS) — items E1–E10
Item	Statement	1	2	3	4	5
E1	The general emotional atmosphere of our home is warm, positive, and supportive.	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐
E2	There is a noticeable and persistent level of tension in our household that is directly related to the demands of remote work.	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐
E3	Family members in our household express affection, appreciation, and emotional support towards one another on a regular basis.	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐
E4	Stress associated with my professional responsibilities negatively affects the emotional tone of our home environment.	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐
E5	Our household routines and structure contribute to a stable and emotionally predictable environment for my child(ren).	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐
E6	Episodes of irritability, impatience, or emotional fatigue associated with remote work occur frequently in our household.	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐
E7	Family members in our household feel heard, acknowledged, and emotionally validated by one another.	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐
E8	I feel that our home is a place of emotional safety and comfort for all family members, including my child(ren).	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐
E9	I am able to maintain a clear emotional boundary between the stress of professional life and the atmosphere of family life at home.	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐
E10	Overall, I would describe the emotional climate of our household as positive and conducive to the wellbeing of all family members.	☐	☐	☐	☐	☐

Note: Children's psychological well-being was assessed using a 5-item adapted sub-scale based on the emotional symptoms subscale of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (Goodman, 1997). Items are not reproduced here due to copyright considerations; the instrument was used in accordance with applicable licensing terms.

SECTION F: Open-Ended Questions

The following questions invite you to describe your personal experience in your own words. There is no expected length; please write as much or as little as you feel is relevant. Your responses will be treated with full confidentiality and used solely for the purposes of this research.

F1. Please describe how your remote work arrangement has affected your daily interactions with your child(ren). In what ways, if any, have these interactions changed compared to the period before you began working from home?
F2. In what ways, if any, has working from home changed the overall quality of your relationship with your child(ren)? Please provide specific examples where possible.
F3. Please describe the most significant challenges you have experienced in managing your professional responsibilities and parenting duties simultaneously while working remotely. How have these challenges affected your family life on a day-to-day basis?
F4. How has your remote work arrangement affected the emotional atmosphere of your household? Please describe any changes — whether positive, negative, or ambivalent — that you have noticed in the prevailing mood or emotional tone of your family environment.
F5. What strategies, practices, or arrangements have you developed — intentionally or otherwise — to maintain a healthy balance between your work obligations and your family life? Please describe what has proved most effective in your experience.
F6. Is there anything further you would like to share about your experience of remote work and its impact on your family relations that has not been addressed in the preceding questions? Any observations, reflections, or experiences you consider relevant to this topic are welcome.

Thank you for completing this questionnaire. Your contribution to this research is greatly appreciated.

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