Challenges of Prepartum Working Professionals Amid the Pandemic: Navigating Non-Work Responsibilities, Burnout, Work-Life Imbalance, and Emotional Exhaustion

The current study aims to examine the impact of non-work responsibilities (NWRs) due to work from home (WfH) conditions on the work–life imbalance (WLI) and emotional exhaustion (EE) experienced by pregnant working women during the pandemic (COVID-19) in Indian settings. Due to lack of empirical evidence on the increasing rate of mental health issues during the prepartum period amid the pandemic, the study attempted to explore the effect of NWRs, prepartum burnout (PB) on the WLI and EE during WfH. The research study was carried out in urban cities of eastern coastal India and other major eastern cities by collecting data from 386 working pregnant women from January to March 2023. For assessing the reliability and validity of the measurement model, a Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) using AMOS 23 was performed, and SPSS 26 using Process macro was used for examining the direct, mediation, and moderated mediation effects. Findings depicted that NWRs and PB are positively significant with EE. Additionally, WLI mediates the relationship between NWRs → EE and PB → EE. Moderated mediation was also examined and reported the contradictory results, with COVID-19 rumination (CR) as the moderator. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to explore the combined effects of organizational psychology (WLI, WfH) and mental health (PB, EE) variables on pregnant working professionals in the Indian context. The study has the potential to overcome the challenges faced by prepartum working professionals in the forthcoming pandemic and challenging times, if any, keeping in mind their robustness in overpowering severe public health emergency events.