Feel Free to Chat About Your Kids? Exploring the Effects of Workplace Parenting Conversations

Workplace conversations are essential for collaboration, knowledge sharing, and relationship building. While much of the literature has focused on work-related discussions, recent shifts toward the blurring of professional and personal boundaries suggest that employees may increasingly converse about aspects of their nonwork lives. One such topic of conversation—parenting—presents a unique and understudied type of workplace exchange given the central role of the parental identity for working parents and the opportunity for them to highlight this important identity through dialogue. In the current set of studies, we introduce workplace parenting conversations as dialogical, in-depth exchanges about parenting-related topics between coworkers who are parents. Drawing from identity management and boundary management theories, we propose that these conversations offer instrumental, affective, and relational benefits that positively impact behaviors across work and parenting role domains. Using a mixed-methods triangulation approach, we first explore the content and processes of workplace parenting conversations through qualitative interviews (Study 1A), followed by an experience sampling study testing our model, complete with behavioral outcomes at work and home (Study 1B). We then explore the underlying micro-mechanisms connecting workplace parenting conversations to the mechanisms in our model through additional interviews (Study 2A) and a field experiment (Study 2B). Our findings contribute to the literature on workplace conversations by identifying an overlooked yet impactful form of workplace dialogue, exploring its primarily positive effects on employees’ behaviors in both work and home contexts, and uncovering unique micro-mechanisms associated with this specific type of conversation.