In this chapter we review research on the division of household labor and its consequences. The review summarizes research focused on issues of measurement, including research on methods of gathering data on housework time and time use in general and discussions of various ways to operationalize the division of household labor. Some attention is paid to historical and theoretical work on housework and women's responsibility for it in particular, followed by a more detailed discussion of current empirical approaches to explaining the division of household labor as well as criticisms of these approaches. Finally, we review research that examines the consequences of the division of household labor, focusing on those studies that examine its impact on labor force participation and wages, marital and family satisfaction, psychological well-being, and perceptions of fairness.

The Division of Household Labor

This paper starting point is the dynamic changes and shifts in the field of measuring and monitoring children’s well being. In the paper we focus on one specific change – the “new” role of children in measuring and monitoring their own well being – a role of active participants rather then of subjects for research. We then turn to present based on a sequence of arguments and findings what role children should carry in measuring and monitoring their well being. Followed by a presentation of five possible roles for children involvement in such studies and in regard to the specific roles existing knowledge from various studies and suggested directions for future research are presented. The danger of children’s involvement is such studies are then discussed followed by a presentation of what do children think on this all issue. Finally we conclude that the potential involved in children’s involvement is much greater then the hazards.

Where are the children? children's role in measuring and monitoring their well-being

Data from time diaries kept by parents in two-parent, two-child families in four states in 1977 and 1978 were used to examine time shared by parents and children, as well as parent solitary times, in a number of household activities. The analysis focuses on how the mother's employment time affects shared parent-child time and whether the time was sex-typed. In addition, a weak test for whether parent-child shared time stimulates children's human capital development was devised and the hypothesis confirmed. Mothers who spent more time in market work shared less traditionally defined child-care time, but only with the older child. In contrast, as a mother's time in market work increased, parent-child shared housework and shared leisure time increased. Household activities shared by the parent and the child were sex-typed. Mothers tended to share more time with daughters in meal preparation and family-care activities, and fathers tended to share more time with their sons in activities involving the home, yard, car, and pet maintenance and in shopping activities. Using time-use data, our study examines the times parents share with their children in several activities, as well as the solitary time parents spend in the same activities. Besides documenting shared parent-child time, this article addresses three specific issues: (a) Whether parent-child shared time involves human capital development on the part of children. Human capital development includes all the processes that augment a child's cognitive, physical, and behavioral skills (Becker, 1991; Bryant, 1991). (b) Whether mothers who work outside the home share less time with children than mothers who are full-time homemakers. (c) Whether there is sex-typing in parent-child shared time (i.e., whether mothers share more time with daughters and fathers share more time with sons in certain activities). LITERATURE REVIEW Maternal Employment and Parental Child Care Research on the relationship between maternal employment, parental child care, and children's outcomes generally has taken one of three approaches. First, some researchers used information about mothers' employment as a proxy for parent-child processes and then tested to see if mothers' employment affected their children's developmental and/or schooling outcomes. Some studies found both positive and negative employment effects (Parcel & Menaghan, 1994), some found selective negative employment effects (Baydar & Brooks-Gunn, 1991; Belsky & Eggebeen, 1991; Blau & Grossberg, 1990; Desai, Chase-Lansdale, & Michael, 1989), and others found no employment effects (Leibowitz, 1977; Murnane, Maynard, & Ohls, 1981). A second body of literature, reviewed in Crouter and McHale (1993), explored how maternal employment affected parent-child activities. These studies usually found that parent-child activities varied in dual-earner and single-earner households. For example, Crouter, Perry-Jenkins, Huston, and McHale (1987) concluded that fathers in dual-earner households were more involved in child care than fathers in single-earner households. While these studies have provided rich detail regarding parent-child interactions, they typically are based on small, convenience samples that have limited generalizability. Furthermore, their measures of parent-child activities are not usually based on diary methods of data collection, which are the most reliable and valid measures of time use (Andorka, 1987; Gershuny & Robinson, 1988; Robinson, 1985, 1988). Several researchers have examined the relationship between mothers' employment and parental time spent in the direct care of children using time-diary data (Bryant & Zick, 1993; Dolan & Scannell, 1987; Gershuny & Robinson, 1988; Hill & Stafford, 1985; Sanik, 1981; Walker & Woods, 1976). These studies found that employed mothers spent less time in physical and nonphysical family care. The measures of child-related time used in these investigations were restrictive; they excluded any time that is shared with children in activities other than child care. …

An Examination of Parent-Child Shared Time.

This study compares the amount of time dual-career husbands and wives spend in housework, relative to their same-sex counterparts in other dual-earner and single-earner households. Data on 1,565 white couples drawn from the 1976 wave of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics were entered into a multiple regression analysis of husbands' and wives' weekly hours of housework. Across couple types, wives spent considerably more hours in housework than husbands and performed about 79% of all the housework that was done in their homes. Dual-career wives performed significantly fewer hours of housework each week than did full-time housewives, but they did not differ significantly from other fulltime employed wives. Dual-career husbands only differed significantly in their household labor from nonprofessional or nonmanagerial husbands of full-time housewives. They did not allocate significantly more time to housework each week than professional or managerial husbands married to housewives or than husbands in other dual-earner families in which the wives had nonprofessional/nonmanagerialjobs. Dual-career couples were not found to be more egalitarian than other couples in their allocation of time to household labor. Consequences of these findings for the extent of viability of the dual-career family form are discussed.

A Residue of Tradition: Jobs, Careers, and Spouses' Time in Housework

The object of this study is to examine change in men's housework and child-care time between 1965 and 1975, a period characterized by significant change both in women's domestic work and in their labor-force participation. Multiple classification analysis is employed to examine change in men's mean housework and child-care time, adjusted for several sociodemographic variables that also may have altered during the decade in question. Neither unadjusted nor adjusted means of men's housework or child-care time changed significantly between 1965 and 1975. Further, few systematic changes in the time spent in housework and child care are observed for specific categories of men. The most important factors influencing men's housework time in both years are paid-work time and leisure time. Key variables that emerge in the analysis of child-care time include paid-work time and the number and ages of children. Overall, the findings cast doubt on the supposed convergence of men's and women's roles. Clearly, men did little between 1965 and 1975 to offset the household pressures created by women's increased participation in the labor force. The findings also raise broader questions concerning the implications of the reorganization of domestic production for the structure of the family.

Change in Men's Housework and Child-Care Time, 1965-1975.

Although the seventies brought changes in the composition of the labor force, these changes were not, on the average, accompanied by changes in the division of labor within two-parent, two-child households. Time data, collected from this family type in 1967 and 1977, indicate that wives even when employed outside the home still spend more time in household production than other family members. Wives spent less time in dishwashing and care of clothing activities while children spent more time shopping in 1977 than in 1967. The input to all household production by the total family remained approximately 10 hours per day.

Division of Household Work: A Decade Comparison—1967–1977

The overall purpose of the research was to determine if motivations for shopping from television shopping channels differ as a function of clothing purchase frequency or shopper personal characteristics. A national random sample of 6,000 television shoppers was purchased from a market research firm. Surveys were mailed and 1,598 usable questionnaires were returned. MANCOVA and ANCOVA revealed that age, education, and sex of respondent were all related to motivations for shopping from television. Education was negatively related to television shopping motivations. Older shoppers and women had higher motivation scores than younger shoppers and men, respectively. After adjusting for shopper personal characteristics, analyses revealed that frequent clothing shoppers had higher motivations for shopping from television than either infrequent clothing shoppers or nonclothing shoppers. Infrequent clothing shoppers also had higher motivation scores than nonclothing shoppers.

Motivations for Television Shopping: Clothing Purchase Frequency and Personal Characteristics

The leisure time of 117 wives and husbands was studied to determine the effect of parenthood on this time allocation. Data from both a weekday and a weekend day, both before and after the birth of the first child were analyzed. Ordinary least squares regression was used to analyze the time use model which controlled for weekend/weekday, and looked at the effects of personal characteristics such as wife's education and employment status, husband's wage rate, and number of years married as well as parental status. The time of the wife and the husband and the ratio of the wife's to husband's time were negatively related to parental status. Each personal characteristic was negatively related to the wife/husband ratio of leisure time and unrelated to husband's leisure.

Leisure before and after parenthood

The purpose of this article is to report the different time allocations of parents with an infant in 1967 and in 1986 in order to observe changes in household production, childcare, and total obligatory activities. The sample is a subset of 84 families from a 1967 study of two-parent families and from 108 families from a study of first-time parents in 1986.

Parents' time use: A 1967–1986 comparison

The purpose of this article is to analyze children's time in household production using tobit analysis to adjust for nonparticipation and to compare the results to a regression analysis. In general, more variables are significant in each of the analyses based upon gender and birth order of the children. More importantly, the additional variables go beyond whether the day was a schoolday and the age of the child. The past failure of children's time spent in household work to change with differences in their families' characteristics appears to have been an artifact of not accounting for nonparticipation when estimating marginal effects.

Margaret Mietus Sanik

Papers

Division of Household Work: A Decade Comparison—1967–1977

Motivations for Television Shopping: Clothing Purchase Frequency and Personal Characteristics

Leisure before and after parenthood

Parents' time use: A 1967–1986 comparison

Children's time in household work: Estimation issues