Parenting Journal · Volume 1 · Issue 4 · Licensed source edition
Work-family conflict and mental health: A systematic review and meta-analysis
Originally published 2026-07-17 · PLOS Medicine
PLOS · DOI 10.1371/journal.pmed.1005162 ↗
Working-family evidence
Work, care and the whole person.
Relevant to decisions about work-family health policies evaluated with longer-term outcomes; the original evidence concerns adult-worker longitudinal literature, with 52 studies in the quantitative meta-analysis.
Directly examines work and family life, parenting, caregiving or employment policies for families.
Editorial reading guide · Kindness
What does evidence over time tell us about work-family strain and mental health?
This reading brings prospective links of directional work-family conflict with depressive symptoms, burnout and distress into the kindness pathway. The systematic review and meta-analysis of longitudinal studies offers a specific workplace lens on how employment and family life meet.
Study context
Adult-worker longitudinal literature, with 52 studies in the quantitative meta-analysis
Age / stage: Adult work literature; not a child study
Read with three questions
- How did the researchers define and assess baseline mental-health adjustment and directional conflict?
- What does the study design allow us to conclude about publication bias, observational designs and pooled associations?
- What would need to be checked before adopting work-family health policies evaluated with longer-term outcomes?
Keep the limits in view
All identified studies were observational, so causality remains unresolved; publication bias and concentration in Western and Chinese populations constrain interpretation.
The text below is the original article’s licensed repository edition. Its wording is not rewritten. Use the Paper Agent beside the text to locate evidence; open the source for figures, tables and complete context.
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Follow the original.
Original authorship, publication date, journal and DOI are preserved. This issue’s TRICK placement and reading questions are editorial additions, not claims made by the original authors.
Dongyu Liu; Yanyan Ni; Tiffany S. W. Ma; Xiaoyan Fan; Yongle Zhan; Ivan H. L. Lam; Matthew C. L. Lui; Tarani Chandola; Ichiro Kawachi; Pim Cuijpers; Michael Y. Ni (2026). Work-family conflict and mental health: A systematic review and meta-analysis PLOS Medicine. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1005162
Permissions checked against the saved article notice; repository publication notices screened 2026-11-05. This is not a new peer-review decision. The source authors and publishers are not represented as endorsing this issue.