In 2018 four management researchers, including William Becker of Virginia Tech and Liuba Belkin of Lehigh University, reported on employees and their partners. They found that the mere presence of an expectation to monitor email outside working hours led to anxiety. This held regardless of how much time employees actually spent on email after hours.
The effect extended to the family. The expectation also harmed the partners’ health and their satisfaction with the relationship. The paper’s title is “Killing Me Softly.”