Fostering Skills and Relief: Positive Spillover Effects Between Unpaid Caregiving and Paid Work

With the expected rise in unpaid caregiving, many caregivers will have to combine care with employment. While most research finds negative spillovers between caregiving and employment, it is crucial to understand the factors under which caregiving has positive spillover effects. Analyzing Dutch retrospective data from the Longitudinal Internet Studies for the Social science (3,543 caregiving situations of 2,042 caregivers), this study examined how factors from the work environment and the caregiving situation are related to two positive spillovers, namely learned skills from caregiving for paid work and employment being a relief from caregiving. Results from multilevel models show that a working environment with high flexibility compared to no flexibility was related to more skill learning and relief. Further, we found that more understanding of managers and colleagues was related to learning skills, while managers and colleagues knowing about caregiving was linked to feeling relief. More diverse caregiving tasks were associated with more skills learned for paid work and more relief felt. These findings can guide state or firm-based policies to not only prevent negative but also foster positive spillovers.