Why Weightloss Matters With Adult Diabetes

Weightloss is the watchword for most type 2 diabetics.  You know you should be losing pounds, eating a reduced amount of sugar and exercising.  But why is it so tough? to do this?

Type 2 diabetes tends to surface after a person reaches 40 years old, but not always.  Even pre-teens are now being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes!  That’s a sad commentary on our socienty today.

And that is why diabetes and losing weight is so much easier said than done these days; our culture is, “more, bigger, better” which  unfortunately includes food serving sizes.  It’s so easy to just say “super size it, please”.

Losing Weight and Diabetes — Why

You’ve heard it from your health care provider, read it in books and magazines, but here it is again.  If you have adult onset diabetes, you need to be on a weight management system, as well as exercising.  You know it, but do you do it?

It’s a fact that if working out helps your body better handle the insulin available to it.

The problem many times is fitting exercise into our daily schedule.  Raise your hand if you’ve ever said, “Just a few more minute’s sleep.”?  Still weight loss exercise programs raise your metabolism…so you burn more calories when you’re sleeping!

And if your medical doctor has you on medication, it’s very important that you take it as directed.

So that’s the “why” of diabetes — what about the “how”.

Diabetes and Losing Weight — How?

Pick some items from your refrigerator or cupboard and inspect it for sugar.  Don’t bother with the obvious, but instead look at items that you don’t expect (for example – salt).  Chances are, if it’s a processed food, sugar has been added.

Should you do away with all sugar?  That’s not practical for weightloss and dealing withadult onset diabetes.  What you want to do is be informed as to how much sugar you are consuming.

The benefits of losing weight really do outweigh all the junk food and inactivity.

A Low Glycemic Plan for Losing Weight

In the last few years, the idea of following a low-glycemic plan has gained quite a bit of momentum among diabetics and non-diabetics alike.  To put it another way, it limits the foods with sugar that’s rapidly metabolized by the body.

By selecting foods that release their sugar into your body more slowly, your blood sugar doesn’t swing wildly.  This is a big help, when it comes to losing pounds and diabetes.

Check With Your Doctor

Naturally, if you are under a medical doctor’s care for your type 2 diabetes, you need to check with him or her regarding weight loss.  Undoubtedly you’ll get the green light, but you should be monitored anyway.

Weightloss and diabetes doesn’t have to be challenging.  But you do need to consider what changes you can make, to live a healthier life.

Smart Strategies To Lose Weight Quickly

The  weight loss industry seems to have done a very good job with conditioning people to think they can shed fast in a weeks time. There has to be over a hundred various quick weight loss products offered, now. No matter what, you need to find an overall strategy that works best for you and is healthy. The thing to realize is you may have to try various products to find one that works well for you. Your results will be even better if you eat appropriately and can get some exercise in, as well. You want to lose your excessive fat once and for all without the usual ups and downs.

It is a part of some Western cultures for people to gorge themselves at a standard rate of three times a day. These are the types of servings during meals that are far too substantial and unhealthy. Well, now many of us know, thanks to various study, that the best strategy is to spread the meals out throughout the day. Be aware to the size of the portions, and it would be a good plan if the food was nutritious. Additionally you want to stop eating until your stomach is feeling full. It is also known that there is a small lag time between when you stop eating and you in fact feel full.
Bottled water sales have been thriving for well over ten years, and people have been consuming it for health reasons. Essentially, drinking water is a very well known solution to helping you lose weight. If you are in the habit of consuming soft drinks – you already know how undesirable they are for you – so we will not tell you to give up. Truly, a lot of research has been done over the years about the advantages of drinking water. It is seriously important to get enough daily water because of the daily influx of environmental toxic compounds and various toxins. You’ll be able to keep possibly bad snacking to a minimum due to the water intake removing hunger feelings.

Check for cardiac diet to lose 10 lbs in 3 days
You can make use of the methods we just talked about, plus others, to achieve major lifestyle adjustments and lose all that extra weight. Take it one step at a time, and before you know it you will discover great improvement toward your objectives. Do be careful that you do not lose weight too fast because the common result is to promptly gain it back.

Healthy Lifestyle | Math and Weight-loss

As soon as people find out that you want to lose weight they are going to start showering you with suggestions. Many people will try to be helpful. They will need you to be able to get to your goal weight as easily as you can. The issue you are going to hear the most frequently is going to be “slimming down is only math.” This concept, at its heart, is normally accurate. Obviously knowing it’s math doesn’t make the path easier to travel. Nobody claims to know how to take peace in the math when you’re trying to keep away from your favorite unhealthy snack foods or when you are too tired to keep working out. This article will help you with this.

The center of weight reduction math is pretty simple. If you would like to shed pounds, you need to use up more calories than you soak up each day. Not only will this make your whole body use what you put into it, it will work with what it has stored up too. You will need energy to keep moving and survive and that’s why your body stores fat to begin with; it offers something to burn if you can not eat enough calories every day. If you do enough exercise to burn all of the calories you ingest, logic declares that your weight should stay exactly where it is now. If you do so much exercise that you just burn through all of the calories you’ve taken in but still have to get through your day, the body will turn to your fat cells as a source of the energy you need.

The first way to handle this problem is to lessen the amount of calories you take in each day. Your physician will work on you to generate a healthy calorie count for your height, background and lifestyle. This does two things: it gives you an objective number and a start line for your diet plan. It makes it possible to figure out how intensive your workout needs to be every day. On the surface it looks like almost everything is centered on discipline. It will take willpower to kick the habit of eating once you’ve reached your calorie quota for the day. You require discipline to train everyday to burn through the calories you eat.

The simplest way to keep disciplined is to understand everything you can about how much exercise it takes to burn through the extra calories you take in. Is the sugary soda that looks so tasty worth the couple of hours you have got to spend on the treadmill to work it off? If you have the ability to see just how much work is needed to counteract a potentially unhealthy decision, it should be less difficult to make smart choices (like choosing a bottle of water).

Not surprisingly, there may be psychology at work with you too. Weight loss math just deals with the surface level of what you are about to go through as you work to shed some pounds and get healthy again. This is why it is so crucial for you to work together with another person who knows how to approach health and weight reduction smartly– they’ll help you decide on a good approach for meeting a weight loss goal.

Work Family Conflict

Changes in family structure (increasing number of dual-income earning families, single parent families or adults caring for children or elder family members) and changes in the workplace (increasing number of hours at workplace) induce an increase in work-family conflict (Byron, 2005). This increase in work-family conflict has encouraged both researchers and practitioners to understand the antecedents and the outcomes of work-family conflict and to seek solutions in this regard (Eby et al., 2005).

In order to better understand work-family conflict, some of the related concepts including work, family, role and interrole conflict are required to be described. ‘Work’ is related to tasks which people do for financial gain, for example, being a doctor or being a teacher or also is related to task-related activities which people do not do for financial gain, for example, being a housewife or being a volunteer in a company (Eby et al., 2005). ‘Family’ is formed of at least two people who have interconnecting roles to complete their shared objectives successfully (Eby et al., 2005). ‘Role’ is defined as an expected pattern or set of behaviors that exist in minds of people (Kossek, Noe, & DeMarr, 1999). The Role Conflict Theory claimed that different expectations from two domains (e.g. work or family domain) can be incompatible. As a result, incompatibility between domains is encountered which makes performing one domain difficult than the other domain (Kahn et al., 1964). Likewise, if two or more domains need time, energy or attention at the same time and the resources are limited for time, energy and attention, a conflict occurs between domains. This is known as ’Interrole Conflict’ (Kahn et al., 1964).

People are expected to have different roles in family and workplace. The different roles can be incompatible and one domain (work) takes from limited resources of time, energy and attention that makes performing one domain (family) difficult than the other domain (work). As a result of this, work-family conflict occurs. Accordingly, work-family conflict is described as ‘‘a form of an interrole conflict which reveals incompatibility in work and family role pressures in some respect’’ (Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985, p.77).

Similarly, the Social Identity Theory indicated that people determine their identity or their roles according to their belonged social environment (Lobel, 1991). For example, people can perceive themselves as a valued employee or a good mother. Some roles have very important aspects of people’s identity and people gain pleasure from them. When people do not have enough time or energy for their roles, then conflict occurs (Lobel, 1991).

In early studies, work-family conflict was examined in unidirectional way; but recent studies showed that work-family conflict is bidirectional as (a) work to family conflict (work interference with family; WIF) and (b) family to work conflict (family interference with work; FIW) (Frone, Russell & Cooper, 1992a; Kossek & Ozeki, 1998). There are two reasons for this distinction. First, the findings of meta-analysis studies have shown that work-family conflict is bidirectional (Kosek & Ozeki, 1998). Second, there are differences obtained from the studies related to the antecedents and the outcomes of work to family conflict and family to work conflict (Frone, Russell & Cooper, 1992a; 1992b). In work to family conflict, somehow family demands are prevented by work demands; on the contrary, in family to work conflict, work demands are prevented by family demands (Netemeyer, Boles & McMurrian, 1996).

Researchers also showed that both kinds of work-family conflict have three types of sources: (a) time based conflict, (b) strain-based conflict, (c) behavior-based conflict which are shown in Figure 1.1. (Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985). In the next section, those different sources will be explained in more detail.

1. Types of Work- Family Conflict

When one domain takes a lot of time which leads to difficulty of fulfilling requirements of the other domain, incompatibility arises between two domains (work and family) called time-based conflict (Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985). Requirement of applying simultaneous performance to both domains is a factor which leads to conflict. A mother who has to be at workplace while she has to prepare her child to school is an example for this type of work-family conflict (Zapf, 2002).

Another form of work-family conflict is strain-based conflict (Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985). If one domain creates strain feelings which lead difficulty to fulfill requirements of the other domain, incompatibility arises between two domains (work and family) (Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985) also named as resource-based or energy-based conflict (De Jonge & Dormann, 2006). One of the crucial points of the strain-based conflict is that one domain should create fatigue, anxiety, tension, etc. in a person (Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985). Another crucial point is the demand for both domains should have same qualities from similar resources such as cognitive, emotional and physical demands (Haun & Dormann, 2016). A call center employee who solves the problems of customers regularly might not be able to solve emotional problems with his or her romantic partner (both emotional demands) is an example for this type of work-family conflict (Haun & Dormann, 2016).

Last and the third form of work-family conflict is behavioral-based conflict (Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985). Differences between behavioral requirements of domains lead to incompatibility between two domains (work and family) (Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985). For instance, at workplace, workers are expected to be authoritative, powerful, rational, objectivity etc.; but at home, being a good partner or having good parental features are expected such as being warm, emotional, vulnerable, etc. (Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985).

Three different types of work family conflict have explained by different predictors of work-family conflict (Byron, 2005). Studies which explained the predictors of work-family conflict will be discussed in the next section.

2. Predictors of Work-Family Conflict

According to the Stress-Strain Model, predictors of work-family conflict are stressors and work-family conflict is a strain (Dunham, 1984). Predictors of work-family conflict have been studied in three domains: (a) work domain predictors, (b) nonwork domain predictors and (c) individual and demographic predictors (Byron, 2005).

Predictors of work domain are job and workplace factors which have an impact on people. Inflexible work schedule or unsupportive organizational culture can be examples for work domain predictors. There are also non-work domain predictors which include family domain predictors. Disagreements in family or an unsupportive spouse can be examples for family domain predictors. On the other hand, there are also other non-work domain predictors such as number of children in family or age of the oldest children. Last domain, individual and demographic predictors include personality, behavioral and individual differences, for example, gender, neuroticism, or attachment style (Byron, 2005).

2.1. Work Domain Predictors

Some of the work domain predictors are mostly related to time-based work-family conflict (Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985) such as work arrangements (Pleck, Staines, & Lang, 1980). To understand flexibility at workplace, two factors must be taken into consideration; flexibility in timing (flextime) and in location (flexplace) (Christensen & Staines, 1990; Galinsky & Johnson, 1998; Zedeck, 1992). Flextime gives employees ability to arrange their work hours according to the guidelines which are offered by the company (Hill et al., 2001). Thus, employees feel more control over their working hours (Hill et al., 2001). In addition, flexplace gives employees ability to control the place where they are able to work. For example, they can work at home or at office or they can work at virtual place (Hill et al., 2001). Briefly, an important factor in flexibility is ‘where’ and ‘when’ people work (Rau & Hyland, 2002).

When it is compared to 20 years ago, today’s jobs take longer hours of employees. As a result, more time and energy is needed at work (Bond, Galinsky & Swanberg, 1997). Flexibility at work helps employees to determine how they spend and utilize their resources (attention, time and energy resources) on work and family domains (Allen et al., 2013). It is possible to provide a balance between work and family responsibilities by understanding how they use their resources (Edwards & Rothbard, 2000; Goode, 1960). For example, an employed mother can go to the parent-teacher meeting of her child during standard working hours (Allen et al., 2013). Herman and Gyllstrom (1977) also explained the relationship between flexible working schedules and work-family conflict with an example. In the university, faculty members work more hours than staff members; but they feel less work-family conflict; as they have more flexible working schedule.

Flextime at work decreases not only work-family conflict (Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985), but also employee strain (Allen et al., 2013), and increases job satisfaction and initiative of workers (Galinsky & Johnson, 1998). On the other hand, flexplace at work increases productivity, improves the morale of workers and also provides better work-family balance (Hill et al., 1998).

For family-supportive organizations, beside flextime and flexplace, having legitimate work-family policies and supervisory support are also important for low level of work-family conflict (Cook, 2009).

Employees want to get fair treatment in the organization which makes them feel valuable in their belonged organization. Work-family policies provide fair treatment as a legitimate action and show employees that the organization cares them and their work-family balance (Cook, 2009). With work-family policies, the organizations show how much they care about employees’ needs and they try to make their employees to feel their importance for the organization (Cook, 2009; Rothausen et al., 1998). Aim of the work-family policies is to balance work and family domains of employees, thus, it helps employees to perceive their organization as supportive for their family (Perry- Smith & Blum, 2000).

For an organization to be perceived as supportive, supervisor behaviors are also important; since they represent the organization (Dutton, Dukerich, & Harquail, 1994; Golden-Biddle & Rao, 1997). If supervisors support work-family policies of the organization, their behaviors will also be appropriate with these policies and they will be helpful to employees to balance work-family domains (Dutton, Dukerich, & Harquail, 1994).

Prabhu and Stewart (2001) claimed that the way how employees perceive work-family policies is also an important factor; because these policies can be effective only if they are perceived correctly (Prabhu & Stewart, 2001). In a study, employees who reported higher work-family conflict, in other words who have higher need for work-family programs, reported that they perceive work-family policies as an important support compared to the others (Cook, 2009). For example, a newly divorced woman having a baby perceives the organizational support as something important (Cook, 2009).

Moreover, Aycan and Eskin (2005) also emphasized the importance of family supportive organizations in Turkey. They found that organizational support is negatively related to both work-family conflict and family-work conflict; moreover the relationship between organizational support and work-family conflict is stronger for men (Aycan & Eskin, 2005).

2.2. Family Domain Predictors

There are some other factors which are family related variables. Family domain predictors are mostly related to time-based and strain-based family-work conflict (Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985) such as family involvement (Edwards & Rothbard, 2000). With family involvement, time and energy for work will also be spend for family activities, so family-work conflict will arise (Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985). In other words, involvement in a role more than its requirement, limits time and energy required for the other role (Hargis, Watt, & Piotrowski, 2011). The Rational View Theory indicated that if an individual spends time and involves to a role excessively, she perceives the other role as a secondary one (Pleck, 1977). Therefore, the number of hours spent on family domain is positively related to family-work conflict (Byron, 2005). Additionally, the Role Theory and the Resource Drain Theory also claimed that family involvement is positively related to family-work conflict (Edwards & Rothbard, 2000). Time-consuming situations during family life, including marriage and parenthood, might lead to higher family-work conflict (Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985). The study of Herman and Gyllstrom (1977) revealed that married people experience higher family-work conflict compared to single people. In another study, Bohen and Viveros-Long (1981) indicated that raising children is another factor for higher family-work conflict. In a similar manner, conditions that take more time and energy of people such as having a baby or a kid (Beutell & Greenhaus, 1980; Greenhaus & Kopelman, 1981) and living in a large family are also important factors which increase family-work conflict (Cartwright, 1978; Keith & Schafer, 1980).

According to the literature, family-work conflict which is caused by the conditions at home will decrease by social support (Parasuraman, Greenhaus, & Granrose, 1992; Thomas & Gangster, 1995). Social support is described as interchanging the resources between individuals to help themselves (Van Daalen, Willemsen, & Sanders, 2006). In other words, time and energy resources would increase by the help of social support, so dealing with family-work and work-family conflict would be much easier (Hargis, Watt, & Piotrowski, 2011). According to another explanation, there will be an exchange of stress between domains, work domain provides transfer of stress to family domain or vice versa which is briefly described as spillover (Edwards & Rothbard, 2000). Otherwise, through social support, the spillover could be also positive. As a result, people experience less stress with lower family-work conflict. (Byron, 2005). Studies supported the relationship between social support and family-work conflict. Accordingly, social support in family is related to low levels of family-work conflict (Adams, King, & King, 1996), low levels of stress and strain (Bernas & Major, 2000). On the other hand, social support is positively related to health and psychological well-being of people (Cohen, 1988).

In the literature, especially for women, spousal support is a social support which decreases family-work conflict (Adams, King, & King 1996; Aycan & Eskin,2005). In a study of Ely, Stone & Ammerman (2014), which was aimed to reveal the impact of spousal support among MBA graduates of Harvard University showed that spousal support was influential on management careers of women, even they were married and had children. On the other hand, women who did not have spousal support were not able to reach their desired career planning and they claimed their marriage and children were the reason.

Therefore, support of a partner protects married people from high level of family-work conflict (Holahan & Gibert, 1979a). There are two kinds of spousal support: (a) emotional support and (b) instrumental support (Adams, King & King, 1996). Understanding each other, showing emphathy and love, being thoughtful for the partners’ requirements and giving advices when needed create emotional support among partners. On the other hand, instrumental support is briefly summarized as helping each other in terms of child care and domestic work (Aryee et al., 1999; Burke & Greenglass, 1999). Emotional support increases feelings of satisfactoriness both at home and work while instrumental support decreases load of family responsibilities (Parasuraman et al., 1996).

On the other hand, incompatibility between partner and career planning (Beutell & Greenhaus, 1982), nonadaptive attitudes of people toward partners’ belonged career (Einswirth- Neems & Handal, 1978) and disagreements in their family roles (Chadwick, Albrecht & Kunz, 1976) reduce the impact of spousal support and increase family-work conflict which all should be taken into consideration.

Finally, the study of Aycan and Eskin (2005) in Turkey showed that even in a different culture than Western population which gives more importance to familialism and collectivism is also revealed similar results in terms of the relationship between spousal support and family-work conflict. As a result, spousal support helps people when dealing with family-work conflict (Aycan & Eskin, 2005).

2.3. Individual and Demographic Predictors

Individual and demographic predictors are related to both work-family conflict and family-work conflict (Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985). One of the individual predictors is Type A personsality disposition. Type A personality is described as being ambitious, persistent, impatient, aggressive and more involved at work (Friedman & Rosenman, 1974). In other words, individuals with Type A personality would give greater importance on work and spend longer hours at workplace (Ganster, 1987). Inevitably, it limits their time on nonwork domains such as family domain (Carlson, 1999). Thus, they tend to experience, especially time-based work-family conflict, due to spending a lot of time at the work (Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985). Type A behavior is also positively related to strain-based work-family conflict (Carlson, 1999), because excessive working causes strain feelings among individuals (Ivancevich, Matteson, & Preston, 1982). In here, time, energy and attention resources are not enough for two domains (work and family) (Rothbard, 2001). Briefly, different studies supported that Type A personality disposition is positively related to work-family conflict (Burke, Weir & Duwors, 1979; 1980a; Werbel, 1978). On the other side, Type B behavior described as being relaxed, patient and overactivated (Friedman & Rosenman, 1974).

Negative affectivity is another individual predictor which is positively related to work-family conflict (Frone, Russell, & Cooper, 1993). It is a personality trait characterized by experiences of negative mood states which is not impacted by time, place and situations (Watson & Clark, 1984).

Negative affectivity is highly related to neuroticism (George, 1992) and trait anxiety (Schaubroeck, Ganster & Kemmerer, 1996). Thus, individuals who have negative affectivity have more tendencies to experience anxiety, distress and depression and also emotions such as anger, fear, disgust etc. (Watson, Clark & Carey, 1988). In addition, they also tend to experience more stress and strain at workplace (Jex & Spector, 1996).

Negative affectivity has an impact on perception of the environment and effects how people perceive their jobs, their family and work-family conflict (Staw, 1984). Various studies found positive relationship between negative affectivity and all directions of work-family conflict (Carlson, 1999; Frone, Russell and Cooper, 1993; Stoeva, Chiu & Greenhaus, 2002). Findings of Carlson (1999) showed that negative affectivity is mostly related to strain-based work-family conflict.

Lastly, resilience is another individual predictor of work-family conflict. Resilience is about individual’s capacity to survive during or after stressful events and also capacity to adapt the situation which is threatening for individual’s life (Luthar, Cicchetti & Becker, 2000). In a study with married first line nurse managers, resilience was found as it helps nurses to have better work-family balance (Kim & Windsor, 2015). The number of studies examining the relationship between resilience and work-family conflict are few; however it is important to consider the influence of resilience on work-family conflict.

A research which examine demographic predictors on work-family conflict showed weak differences for gender and income (Byron, 2005). However, there are also work-family studies which emphasize gender differences and they found that women experience higher work-family conflict than men (e.g. Duxbury & Higgins, 1991; Grandey & Cropanzano, 1999; Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985; Hall, 1972; Karasek, 1979). Furtermore, studies with employed mothers found that employed mothers experience higher work-family conflict than employed fathers (Byron, 2005; Marshall & Barnett, 1993).

As it was mentioned before, demographic variables such as the number of children in the family and their ages are also related to work-family conflict (Bedeian, Burke & Moffett, 1988). More and younger children take more time and energy of parents (Grandey & Cropanzano, 1999) which leads to work-family conflict (Byron, 2005) and time-based family-work conflict (Hargis, Watt & Piotrowski, 2011).

Like predictors, consequences of work-family conflict are also important to examine in order to briefly understand work-family conflict. There are various negative consequences of work-family conflict which will be discussed in the next section. Before describing those well-known consequences, negative emotions (feelings of regret and guilt) which has been rarely examined outcomes of work-family conflict will be discussed.

In this direction, it is important to examine experiences of negative emotions following work-family conflict for an entire understanding; because understanding these emotional experiences also makes easier to understand work and family life, work-family conflict (Morgan & King, 2012), general health status and psychological well being of individuals (Allen et al., 2000).

Another important point of studying negative emotional experiences following work-family conflict is the limited number of studies about this topic. Significance of the role of emotions in work-family conflict is still unclear; so this subject requires more studies and publications (Bochantin & Cowan, 2016). Briefly, examining emotional experiences following work-family conflict will provide a better understanding of this complex relationship and also valuable information for scientists, practitioners and employers who aim to build a balance between family and work life (Bochantin & Cowan, 2016).

1.2.Work-Family Conflict and Negative Emotions: Regret and Guilt

Most of the studies which examine the relationship between work-family conflict and emotional experiences concentrated on two different emotional experiences, guilt and hostility. These studies were also examined how these emotional experiences effect human’ behavior (e.g. how they trigger antisocial behaviors) (Morgan & King, 2012; Rodell & Judge, 2009). On the other hand, most of the studies were aimed to explain the role of emotional experiences on the relationship between individuals and organizational-relational consequences (Bochantin & Cowan, 2016).

Guilt is defined as ‘‘an individual’s unpleasant emotional state associated with possible objections to his or her actions, inaction, circumstances or intentions’’ (Tangney, 1992, p.199). On the other hand, regret is defined as ‘‘ a more or less painful cognitive and emotional state of feeling sorry for misfortunes, limitations, losses, transgressions, shortcomings or mistakes’’ (Landman, 1993, p.36).

According to more traditional explanations, regret is a cognitive emotion which includes counterfactual thinking process. Counterfactual thinking focuses on (a) finding alternative choices and (b) comparing consequences of choices with alternative consequences. In other words, in order to regret, individuals must think about consequences of their choices and must think what would happen in case that they would make different choice (Gilovich & Medvec, 1995).

Generally, individuals have feelings of regret if they believe the consequences of alternative choices are better than the consequence of chosen option. For example, a person who chooses option A can regret when he/she realizes that option Y would give better results than option A (Zeelenberg, 1999). For example, dying in a plane crash after changing the date of flight is much more tragic than dying in a plane crash without changing the date of flight; because it includes the possibility of the case that the individual could fly in the first reservation date (Gilovich & Medvec, 1995). Individuals integrate their cognitive processes to this entire process by comparing all possibilities together which makes emotion of regret counterfactual emotion (Kahneman & Miller, 1986).

When decision about the responsibility of a choice mostly belongs to the individuals, feelings of regret increases (Burks, 1946; Zeelenberg et al., 1998b). It must be noted that some studies supported the idea that feelings of regret include feelings of responsibility while some studies suggested that feelings of responsibility is not necessary to have feelings of regret (Connolly, Ordóñez & Coughlan, 1997; Landman, 1993).

Thinking about a decision as a mistake, believing existence of lost opportunities, willingness to correct a mistake and taking back given decisions are experiences which individuals have during feelings of regret. Briefly, a wish of a second chance shows up when emotion of regret is dominant (Zeelenberg, 1999).

In 1950s, researchers started to focus on emotion of regret in their studies and came up with the theory called ‘Minimax Regret Principle’. The Principle of Minimax Regret is a theory which determines the maximum level of regret which an individual can experience. According to the theory, emotion of regret is related to decision-making process of individuals (Luce & Raiffa, 1957; Savage, 1951).

In the following years, economic choice theorists (e.g. Loomes & Sugden, 1982) came up with a new theory called Regret Theory. According to the Regret Theory, individuals experience some emotions as a result of their decisions. Regret is an emotion which is experienced as a result of decisions of the individuals (Bell, 1982; Loomes & Sugden, 1982). If consequences of the alternative decisions which was not preferred is better than consequence of the given decision, people would regret. On the contrary, if consequences of alternative decisions are worse than consequence of the given decision, people become pleased (Starmer & Sugden, 1993; Zeelenberg et al., 1998d).

Recent studies about regret claimed another theory called Decision Justification Theory (Connolly & Zeelenberg, 2002). This theory assumed that decision-related regret contains two basic concepts: (a) bad-outcome regret which is related to evaluating outcomes of a decision and (b) self-blame regret which is related to self-blame after making a wrong decision. In both conditions, people experience regret as an emotion. These two conditions of regret do not have to occur together. Even if a decision outcome is good, people can blame themselves and regret about the decision. For example, people who drink and drive, even if they reach to their home safely, would regret if they look behind and think what could have happened. For another example, a mother could think that being vaccinated is a good decision for health of her child; however, there could be some adverse impacts of the vaccine. If the child would suffer from these adverse impacts, the mother could regret as a result of the outcome of her decision (compared to non-vaccination); however, there is no need for the mother to blame herself; since she tries to find out the best solution after long searches. As a summary, the process of drink and drive makes individuals have self-blame regret, worse adverse impacts of the vaccine makes individuals have bad-outcome regret (Connolly & Zeelenberg, 2002).

Kahneman and Tversky (1982) studied about regret to identify whether people are more likely to have feelings of regret as a result of (1) their actions that they did but wish they had not or (2) their inactions that they did not do but wish they had. Researchers found that an active action which has bad consequences makes people regret more than a passive inaction which has bad consequences (see in Kahneman and Tversky, 1982). In the following years, Gilovich and Medvec (1995) also studied the same topic. In addition to the research of Kahneman and Tversky (1982), researchers investigated whether regret experienced as a result of actions or inactions that are related to time. Results showed that actions create feelings of regret more in the short term while inactions create feelings of regret more in the long term (Gilovich & Medvec, 1994; 1995).

Other studies also revealed that regret is an emotion which people experience frequently (Zeelenberg, 1999). Shimanoff (1984) found that regret is a frequent emotion reported in the study of verbal expressions of emotions. According to the study, the word of ‘regret’ is the most frequent spoken word following the word of ‘love’ (Shimanoff, 1984). Briefly, regret is a frequent emotion which makes people think about the outcomes of their decisions, how they could change these outcomes and how they can prevent from wrong decisions in the future (Zeelenberg, 1999).

Lines of emotions are still uncertain and it is hard to process and denominate the emotions (Scherer, 2005). Regret and guilt, embarrassment and shame are emotions which are difficult to distinguish (Sabini & Silver, 1997). In a study of Russell and Mehrabian (1977), people were asked to score different emotional states and as a result, people found regret and guilt as related to each other. Other studies also found this relationship between regret and guilt (Fontaine et al., 2006; Mandel, 2003).

Therefore, regret and guilt are emotions that are associated with each other (Fontaine et al., 2006; Mandel, 2003; Russell & Mehrabian, 1977) and both include feelings of responsibility about a negative outcome of a decision. Main difference between two emotions is related to who is influenced by the negative outcome of the given decision (Berndsen et al., 2004). Regret is an emotion that people experience when people harm themselves , while guilt is experienced when people harm someone else (Ben-Ze’ev, 2000; Berndsen et al., 2004).

Even if regret is related to harming themselves, it can be also experienced when individuals damage the others (Zeelenberg, Van der Pligt & Manstead, 1998b). This kind of regret is quite similar to the feelings of guilt (Gilovich & Medvec, 1995). However, guilt is a conscious emotion experienced in case people judge themselves when they do not behave according to their social norms that are required in their social environment (Tangney, 1992).

Roseman, Wiest and, Swartz (1994) distinguished guilt and regret according to their outcomes, rather than their reasons. Researchers revealed that people who regret would try to avoid their decision or avoid their behavior which leads to regret in order to prevent themselves to feel that emotion. To perform this, people try to behave differently or improve their behaviors in a positive manner (Roseman, Wiest & Swartz, 1994).

People who have feelings of guilt are scared about being alienated by other people. Briefly, guilt mostly focus on other people (external world) while regret mostly focus on inner world (Roseman, Wiest & Swartz, 1994). Being related to the external world feature of guilt was also supported by the other researchers (Baumeister, Stillwell, & Heatherton, 1994; 1995; Tangney, 1991; 1995). According to Tangney (1991, 1995), guilt is experienced as result of critical comparison between one’s behavior and the behavior which is appropriate for social norms. According to Baumeister, Stillwell, & Heatherton (1994) guilt is experienced as a result of assessment of one’s behavior by someone else. For example, one can experience guilt if he forgets to celebrate his mother’s birthday. However, if his mother looks disappointed, feelings of guilt may increase. On the other hand, if his mother tells him it is not important to forget birthday, feelings of guilt may decrease (Berndsen et al., 2004). Contrary to this, since regret is related to inner world, individuals try to tolerate the outcomes of behaviors in their inner world with feelings of regret. For example, if any one receives a rejection from a job application; because of his appearance, he may regret about not dressing in a better way; however, if he does not want to get the job that much, feelings of regret may decrease (Berndsen et al., 2004).

Studies about regret mostly focus on decisions about money and investment plans (e.g. Kahneman & Tversky, 1982) or students’ course selections (e.g. Connolly, Ordóñez & Coughlan, 1987). However, there is lack of study about regret which arises with the decision of becoming mother. One of the precious studies about this topic is Donath’s study (Donath, 2015). Donath (2015) studied qualitatively on distress, conflict, uncertainty and feelings of deprivation that women experience with motherhood. In the study with 23 Israeli mothers who have different professions and educational levels, it was revealed that mothers can regret after having a child (Donath, 2015). Some of the words of the mothers in the study are: ‘‘If today I could go back, obviously I wouldn’t have children. It’s totally obvious to me’’, ‘‘Every time I talk to my friends I tell them that if I had the insights and the experience I have today, I wouldn’t have created even a quarter of a child. The thing that is the most painful for me is that I can’t go back in time. Impossible. Impossible to repair’’ (Donath, 2015, p.354). It is difficult for mothers to express all these words, because the society does not let mothers to think or feel that decision of becoming mother is bad or unlucky decision (Donath, 2015).

Motherhood can bring positive feelings including pleasure, fun and satisfaction (Arendell, 2000); however it can also bring negative feelings such as disappointment, desperation, hostility and unsatisfaction (Beauvoir, [1949] 1993; Rich, 1976). Regret is also an emotion that includes negative feelings (Donath, 2015). It cannot be ignored that feelings of regret of mothers can increase as a result of work-family conflict if mothers participate to work life. As a result, one of the aims of this study is to examine the relationship between family-work conflict and feelings of regret related to ‘the decision of becoming mother’ which employed mothers experience.

Another negative emotion that should be examined is guilt. Although emotions are out of the research area of work-family conflict (MacDermid, Seery & Weiss, 2002), a few studies which examine work-family conflict and emotions together focus on feelings of guilt and hostility (Bochantin & Cowan, 2016). As a result of work- family conflict, feelings of guilt can be experienced by the thought of violation of the social standard (Piotrkowski & Repetti, 1984). Thought of violation of the social standard is formed when gender roles are involved into work-family conflict (Morgan & King, 2012). According to the gender roles in society, women, especially mothers, are expected to be warmer, nurturing (Eagly, Wood & Dieckman, 2000) and take more responsibility on family demands in order to provide a stable family environment (Gutek, Nakamura & Nieva, 1981). In addition, even if these mothers take responsibility on work demands to contribute financial support to home, expectations of family life are still maintained (Gutek, Searle & Klepa, 1991). To satisfy the expectations of family life, mothers take more responsibility on housekeeping (Major, 1993) and child care (Bianchi et al., 2000). These expectations and notion of being a “good mom” are the social concept which is difficult to change in the society (McMahon, 1995). In movies and advertisements effecting society, mothers are shown as a fundamental figure who provides permanence of family life (Kaplan, 1992). Social media also contributed to this intensive mothering, and even argued the idea that mothers’ work life has negative impact on both mothers and children. In this direction, it was suggested that motherhood at home is the best option (Cheal, 1991). There are also many studies which supported daily care of children would be effected negatively when mothers are employed. On the contrary, there are studies which claimed quality of daily care of children is more important; however, unfortunately, the stigmatization of employed mothers and daily care of their children is still maintained (Zimmerman et al., 2008).

Considering all of these, it is not surprising that employed mothers have feelings of guilt (Guendouzi, 2006). Mothers have feelings of guilt when they believe their work life has negative impacts on their family life, especially on their children’ life. For example, mothers may have feelings of guilt, when they have to leave their children to the caregiver in order to go to work. In addition, besides expectations of family life, there are also expectations of work life. These expectations create high demands for time and energy for employed mothers (Bianchi, Robinson & Milkie, 2006). In other words, limited sources with high expectations create work-family conflict on employed mothers (Bianchi, Robinson & Milkie, 2006) Along with work-family conflict, ‘employment related guilt’ is experienced as a result of behaving different than traditional gender role expectations (Borelli et al., 2016).

Unfortunately, because of the traditional mother model in the society, even in this century, it is still hard to deal with the pressure of the society on employed mothers and a lot of mothers are forced to stay at home and raise children, instead of maintaining their work life (Guendouzi, 2006).

Employed mothers have feelings of employment related guilt more than employed fathers; because only mothers think that stability of their family life is prevented by their work life (Gutek, Searle & Klepa, 1991) In society, men and fathers are expected to be independent and assertive (Eagly, Wood & Diekman, 2000) and to have more responsibility on work demands. For example, staying in a workplace for a long time is usual for men and fathers. In additon, they do not have to provide a stable family environment (Gutek, Searle & Klepa, 1991).

Effects of traditional gender roles are not different in Turkey. Turkish women joined to work life by the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the establishment of the Republic of Turkey (Aycan & Eskin, 2005). In today’s Turkey, 31.5 % of Turkish women are in the part of the labour market (TUIK, 2017). However, although Turkish women are in the part of the labour market, they still continue to maintain their traditional gender roles. As a result, employed mothers who live in Turkey also experience work-family conflict more than employed fathers and they also have more feelings of employment related guilt which arise as a result of work-family conflict (Aycan & Eskin, 2005). In conclusion, another aim of this study is to examine the relationship between work-family conflict and feelings of employment related guilt which employed mothers experience.