In the stress-management classes Debbie Mandel teaches, parents often tell her about their struggles to combine work and home. Ranking high on their list of challenges is the cellphone.

"Most of the complaints are about how it intrudes on their home life," says Ms. Mandel, of Lawrence, N.Y. "They get called in the middle of the night. The phone is always ringing about minute issues. They ask me, 'How do we deal with that?' "

It's a question on many people's minds these days. A study in the December issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family finds that cellphones and pagers interfere with family life by bringing job worries and problems home. Interviews with working couples - many with children - revealed that cellphone use tends to decrease family satisfaction and increase distress. "People felt they couldn't turn them off," says Noelle Chesley, a sociologist at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, who conducted the study. "I couldn't find evidence of benefits."

Although cellphones give workers the illusion of staying connected with both employers and family members, Mandel often sees a different reality. One mother in her stress-management class boasted that her cellphone enabled her to attend all of her daughter's school activities. "I don't miss anything," she told the group. "Yes, you do," Mandel countered, explaining that when the woman went on a hay ride with her daughter and other children, she spent the whole time on the phone. "Her body was present, but she wasn't there emotionally," Mandel says. "That sends a very ambivalent statement to a child. Sometimes it's better not to be there. To be on the phone with business is ignoring the child."

This "absent presence," as sociologists call it, can also occur when workers with cellphones care for older relatives. "One elderly parent was annoyed," Mandel says. "She told her daughter, 'You trivialize me. You are not giving me your full attention. I'm not important to you. I'm competing for your time.' "

Employees feel more pulled between work and family than ever before, observes Ellen Galinsky, president of the Families and Work Institute in New York. As a result, she sees "an addictive quality to being in touch and worrying that you're going to be out of touch."

As the owner of a large collection agency in Las Vegas, David Stone knows that tug. He tries not to answer his phone at night. But he always thinks he has missed something vitally important for business. "During dinner and on weekends, my wife will roll her eyes and say, 'David, it's not that important.' She's always right. It might just be a business friend calling to see if I'm available for lunch."

At the same time, Mr. Stone emphasizes the benefits of being connected. Knowing he was reachable let him relax on a recent family vacation in Tahiti, for example.

Gabrielle Torello, a communications consultant in Hackensack, N.J., and the single mother of two young boys, calls her cellphone "an invaluable tool, but also the bane of my existence."

Yet like most parents, Ms. Torello would not be without her cellphone. "As difficult as it may be to field messages from an anxious editor at the playground or to sneak out of a meeting to whisper consolation to a 7-year-old frustrated by homework," she says, "having a cellphone allows me to keep in touch with all of the various and equally important aspects of my busy life."

For employees on electronic leashes, cellphones and pagers raise questions about who draws the line between work and home, and where that line is.

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