Multiple Roles and Role Strain: Some Notes on Human Energy, Time and Commitment

Abstract

Sociologists generally invoke a natural approach to human energy, stressing the overdemanding nature of multiple roles. In contrast, a seldom used expansion approach provides an energy-creation theory of multiple roles rather than a spending or drain theory. Empirical literature only partially supports the scarcity approach view that multiple roles inevitably create strain. Moreover, human physiology implies that human activity produces as well as consumes energy. We need a comprehensive theory that explains both the scarcity and the abundance phenomenology of energy. Such a theory requires careful analytical distinctions between time, energy, and commitments. It is argued that particular types of commitment systems are responsible for whether or not strain will occur. A theory of scarcity excuses explains how strain or overload is generally rooted in one such system. Scarcity excuses get implicit support from scarcity theories, and a sociology of these theories suggests their ideological basis.