A Treatise on the Family. G. S. Becker. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 1981. Gary Becker is one of the most famous and influential economists of the second half of the 20th century, a fervent contributor to and expounder of the University of Chicago free-market philosophy, and winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize in economics. Although any book with the word "treatise" in its title is clearly intended to have an impact, one coming from someone as brilliant and controversial as Becker certainly had such a lofty goal. It has received many article-length reviews in several disciplines (Ben-Porath, 1982; Bergmann, 1995; Foster, 1993; Hannan, 1982), which is one measure of its scholarly importance, and yet its impact is, I think, less than it may have initially appeared, especially for scholars with substantive interests in the family. This book is, its title notwithstanding, more about economics and the economic approach to behavior than about the family. In the first sentence of the preface, Becker writes "In this book, I develop an economic or rational choice approach to the family." Lest anyone accuse him of focusing on traditional (i.e., material) economics topics, such as family income, poverty, and labor supply, he immediately emphasizes that those topics are not his focus. "My intent is more ambitious: to analyze marriage, births, divorce, division of labor in households, prestige, and other non-material behavior with the tools and framework developed for material behavior." Indeed, the book includes chapters on many of these issues. One chapter examines the principles of the efficient division of labor in households, three analyze marriage and divorce, three analyze various child-related issues (fertility and intergenerational mobility), and others focus on broader family issues, such as intrafamily resource allocation. His analysis is not, he believes, constrained by time or place. His intention is "to present a comprehensive analysis that is applicable, at least in part, to families in the past as well as the present, in primitive as well as modern societies, and in Eastern as well as Western cultures." His tone is profoundly conservative and utterly skeptical of any constructive role for government programs. There is a clear sense of how much better things were in the old days of a genderbased division of labor and low market-work rates for married women. Indeed, Becker is ready and able to show in Chapter 2 that such a state of affairs was efficient and induced not by market or societal discrimination (although he allows that it might exist) but by small underlying household productivity differences that arise primarily from what he refers to as "complementarities" between caring for young children while carrying another to term. Most family scholars would probably find that an unconvincingly simple explanation for a profound and complex phenomenon. What, then, is the salient contribution of Treatise on the Family? It is not literally the idea that economics could be applied to the nonmarket sector and to family life because Becker had already established that with considerable success and influence. At its core, microeconomics is simple, characterized by a belief in the importance of prices and markets, the role of self-interested or rational behavior, and, somewhat less centrally, the stability of preferences. It was Becker's singular and invaluable contribution to appreciate that the behaviors potentially amenable to the economic approach were not limited to phenomenon with explicit monetary prices and formal markets. Indeed, during the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s, he did undeniably important and pioneering work extending the domain of economics to such topics as labor market discrimination, fertility, crime, human capital, household production, and the allocation of time. Nor is Becker's contribution the detailed analyses themselves. Many of them are, frankly, odd, idiosyncratic, and off-putting. …

A Treatise on the Family

The Social Psychology of Groups. J. W Thibaut & H. H. Kelley. New York: alley, 1959. The team of Thibaut and Kelley goes back to 1946 when, after serving in different units of the armed services psychology program, the authors joined the Research Center for Group Dynamics, first at M.LT and then at the University of Michigan. Their continued association eventuated in appointments as fellows at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, 19561957. It is during these years that their collaboration resulted in the publication of The Social Psychology of Groups. The book was designed to "bring order and coherence to present-day research in interpersonal relations and group functioning." To accomplish this aim, the authors introduced, defined, and illustrated basic concepts in an effort to explain the simplest of social phenomena, the two-person relationship. These basic principles and concepts were then employed to illuminate larger problems and more complex social relationships and to examine the significance of such concepts as roles, norm, power, group cohesiveness, and status. The lasting legacy of this book is derived from the fact that the concepts and principles discussed therein serve as a foundation for one of the dominant conceptual frameworks in the field of family studies today-the social exchange framework. Specifically, much of our contemporary thinking about the process of interpersonal attraction and about how individuals evaluate their close relationships has been influenced by the theory and concepts introduced in The Social Psychology of Groups. Today, as a result of Thibaut and Kelley, we think of interpersonal attraction as resulting from the unique valence of driving and restraining forces, rewards and costs, subjectively thought to be available from a specific relationship and its competing alternatives. We understand, as well, that relationships are evaluated through complex and subjectively based comparative processes. As a result, when we think about assessing the degree to which individuals are satisfied with their relationships, we take into consideration the fact that individuals differ in terms of the importance they attribute to different aspects of a relationship (e.g., financial security, sexual fulfillment, companionship). We also take into consideration the fact that individuals differ in terms of the levels of rewards and costs that they believe are realistically obtainable and deserved from a relationship. In addition, as a result of Thibaut and Kelley's theoretical focus on the concept of dependence and the interrelationship between attraction and dependence, there has evolved within the field of family studies a deeper appreciation for the complexities and variability found within relationships. Individuals are dependent on their relationships, according to Thibaut and Kelley, when the outcomes derived from the existing relationship exceed those perceived to be available in competing alternatives. Individuals who are highly dependent on their relationships are less likely to act to end their relationships. This dependence and the stability it engenders may or may not be voluntary, depending on the degree to which individuals are attracted to and satisfied with their relationships. When individuals are both attracted to and dependent on their relationships, they can be thought of as voluntarily participating in their relationship. That is, they are likely to commit themselves to the partner and relationship and actively work for its continuance. Thibaut and Kelley termed those relationships characterized by low levels of satisfaction and high levels of dependence "nonvoluntary relationships. …

The Social Psychology of Groups

Scholarship on work and family topics expanded in scope and coverage during the 2000 – 2010 decade, spurred by an increased diversity of workplaces and of families, by methodological innovations, and by the growth of communities of scholars focused on the work-family nexus. We discuss these developments as the backdrop for emergent work-family research on six central topics: (a) gender, time, and the division of labor in the home; (b) paid work: too much or too little; (c) maternal employment and child outcomes; (d) work-family conflict; (e) work, family, stress, and health; and (f) work-family policy. We conclude with a discussion of trends important for research and suggestions about future directions in the work-family arena.

Work and Family Research in the First Decade of the 21st Century.

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Unbending Gender: Why Family and Work Conflict and What To Do About It

band’s income. We argue that this pattern is best explained by gender identity norms, which induce an aversion to a situation where the wife earns more than her husband. We present evidence that this aversion also impacts marriage formation, the wife’s labor force participation, the wife’s income conditional on working, marriage satisfaction, likelihood of divorce, and the division of home production. Within marriage markets, when a randomly chosen woman becomes more likely to earn more than a randomly chosen man, marriage rates decline. In couples where the wife’s potential income is likely to exceed the husband’s, the wife is less likely to be in the labor force and earns less than her potential if she does work. In couples where the wife earns more than the husband, the wife spends more time on household chores; moreover, those couples are less satisfied with their marriage and are more likely to divorce. These patterns hold both cross-sectionally and within couples over time.

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Gender Identity and Relative Income within Households

Why has the gendered division of domestic labour proved so resistant to change despite the growth in married women’s labour force participation? We develop a game theoretic model of marriage to show that women’s individual levels of relative economic autonomy are not in themselves sufficient to bring about an aggregate shift in the division of domestic labour. Using data for 22 countries from the 1994 International Social Survey Programme, we show that what is required is that there be a greater proportion of economically autonomous women within the society as a whole, together with a sufficiently large proportion of men who, if faced with an economically autonomous woman, would rather participate in domestic tasks than endure marital breakdown. These results suggest that until we see greater gender material equality for the majority of women in a society and an evolution in men’s gender ideology, the gendered division of domestic labour will persist.

The Persistence of the Gendered Division of Domestic Labour

Gender relations remain embedded in their sociopolitical context. Compared here using event-history analysis is how household divisions of paid and unpaid labor affect marital stability in the former West Germany, where policy reinforced male breadwinner families, and the United States, where policy remains silent regarding the private sphere. In Germany, any moves away from separate gendered spheres in terms of either wives' relative earnings or husbands' relative participation in housework increase the risk of divorce. In the United States, however, the more stable couples are those that adapt by displaying greater gender equity. These results highlight that policy shapes how gender gets done in the intimate sphere, and that reinforcement of a gendered division of labor may be detrimental to marital stability.

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"Doing" gender in context: household bargaining and risk of divorce in Germany and the United States

We review comparative evidence of institutional effects on families in Western societies. We focus on 2 key aspects of family life: gendered divisions of labor and people's transitions into, within, and out of relationships. Many individual-level models assume the effects are robust across countries. The international evidence over the past decade suggests instead that the socioeconomic and policy contexts strongly influence the significance and even direction of individual effects. A growing body of evidence also highlights important differences across social groups and family forms within countries. The pattern of relative gender, class, and other group equality varies across countries, as do related family experiences and outcomes. We conclude with suggestions for future comparative family research.

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“Families” in International Context: Comparing Institutional Effects Across Western Societies

The literature on the predictors of the division of household labor continues to expand, but the effect of this division on family outcomes has not been explored. Using the German SocioEconomic Panel (N = 628), I analyze the effect of men s participation in housework and child care on the likelihood of second birth and divorce. Fathers' greater relative child-care time increases couples' odds of second birth, attenuating the negative effect of mothers' employment. Husbands' relative housework time is insignificant in predicting second birth or divorce among couples with at least one child, but increases the likelihood of divorce among childless couples. This is evidence that the division of domestic labor affects family outcomes, but effects differ depending on the outcome and presence of children. Key Words: divorce, fertility, gendered division of labor, longitudinal analysis. Wives' increasing labor force participation was expected to lead to a revolution in the gendered division of labor, a revolution that "stalled" at the door of most households (Hochschild, 1989). Although the division of paid labor continues to dissolve, the division of domestic labor remains firmly gendered and female (Blossfeld & Drobnic, 2001; Gershuny, 2000). In industrialized countries, husbands' average domestic participation is about one third of the time contribution of wives (Gershuny). One explanation for why the gendered division of domestic labor persists is that couples "do" gender to reflect normative expectations of social identities as women and men within the intimate sphere of marriage (Berk, 1985; West & Zimmerman, 1987). For example, U.S. married women contribute more and married men fewer hours toward domestic tasks than either does in his or her single state (South & Spitze, 1994), and where U.S. women are the primary breadwinners, they are even more likely to do a greater share of domestic tasks (Brines, 1994; Hochschild, 1989). Families, however, are a locus of struggle, not an uncontested, stable gendered domain (Hartmann, 1981). Consequently, the gendered division of domestic labor might have repercussions for subsequent family outcomes. Although some research has looked at the effects of the division of housework on individual outcomes such as wages and work effort (Becker, 1985; Bielby & Bielby, 1988; Coverman, 1985; McAllister, 1990); marital satisfaction (Perry-Jenkins & Folk, 1994; Robinson & Spitze, 1992; Yogev & Brett, 1985) or conflict (Blair, 1993; Lye & Biblarz, 1993); and physical (Ross & Bird, 1994) or psychological wellbeing (Bird, 1999; Glass & Fujimoto, 1994; Mirowsky, 1996; Ross, Mirowsky, & Huber, 1983), none has explored whether the division of domestic labor affects future family decisions. Gupta (1999) analyzed the causal link between marital status and housework time, but not vice versa. So it remains unknown whether husbands' even modest contributions to domestic tasks have a significant effect on the likelihood of two key family outcomes: fertility and marital stability. Here, I use event history analysis of the German SocioEconomic Panel to explore whether the division of domestic labor alters the likelihood of either second birth or divorce. Germany is chosen for three reasons. First, the gendered division of labor has been encouraged by German labor market policy, family transfers, and other social provisions (Ostner, 1993). It is therefore the ideal country in which to test the fundamental assumptions of the dominant family model described in the next section. second, because the household division of labor changes as family members move into and out of employment and as family demands increase and decrease, effects on subsequent family transitions are best analyzed with longitudinal data where both adults are interviewed at regular intervals, which is the case with the German SocioEconomic Panel. U.S. panels are either conducted infrequently or have limited measures of domestic tasks and rely on a single household respondent, whereas other national panels have started more recently. …

The gendered division of labor and family outcomes in germany

Gender equity and its effects on fertility vary across socio-political contexts, particularly when comparing less with more developed economies. But do subtle differences in equity within more similar contexts matter as well? Here we compare Italy and Spain, two countries with low fertility levels and institutional reliance on kinship and family, but with employment equity among women during the 1990s slightly greater in Italy than Spain. The European Community Household Panel is used to explore the effect of this difference in gender equity on the likelihood of married couples having a second birth during this time period. Women’s hours of employment reduce the birth likelihood in both countries, but non-maternal sources of care offset this effect to different degrees. In Spain, private childcare significantly increases birth likelihood, whereas in Italy, father’s greater childcare share increases the likelihood, particularly among employed women. These results suggest that increases in women’s employment equity increase not only the degree of equity within the home, but also the beneficial effects of equity on fertility. These equity effects help to offset the negative relationship historically found between female employment and fertility.

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Lynn Prince Cooke

Papers

The Persistence of the Gendered Division of Domestic Labour

"Doing" gender in context: household bargaining and risk of divorce in Germany and the United States

“Families” in International Context: Comparing Institutional Effects Across Western Societies

The gendered division of labor and family outcomes in germany

Gender Equity and Fertility in Italy and Spain