USA: Men's
Changing Contribution to Housework and Child Care
Sullivan, Gurion & Coltrane
USA: Men's Changing Contribution to Housework
and Child Care
by Oriel Sullivan, Ben
Gurion University
and
Scott Coltrane, University
of California Riverside
A Discussion Paper on Changing Family Roles
Prepared for the 11th Annual Conference of the Council on
Contemporary Families
April 25-26, 2008,
University of Illinois,
Chicago
For thirty years, researchers studying the changes
in family dynamics since the rise of the women's movement have concluded
that, despite gains in the world of education, work, and politics, women
face a "stalled revolution" at home. According to many studies, men's
family work has barely budged in response to women's increased
employment. The typical punch line of many news stories has been that
even though women are working longer hours on the job and cutting back
their own housework, men are not picking up the slack.
Our research suggests that these studies were
based on unrealistic hopes for instant transformation. They underestimated
the amount of change going on behind the scenes and the growing willingness
of men to adapt to their wives' new behaviors and values. In fact, more
couples are sharing family tasks than ever before, and the movement toward
sharing has been especially significant full-time dual-earner couples.
Most previous literature on the division of family
work began with the naive assumption that the massive gender rearrangements
that began in the late 1960s would, unlike any other major social
transformation in history, have instantaneous results. Researchers
therefore did not take a sufficiently long view of change over time. Our
ongoing studies of couple relationships reveal instead that change has been
continuous and significant, not merely in younger couples who begin their
relationship with more flexible ideas about gender, but also in older
couples where the wife has worked long enough to change her husband's
values and behaviors (Sullivan 2006). We believe that the transformation of
marriage that has occurred in the comparatively short period of 40 years is
too great a break from the past to be dismissed as a slow and grudging
evolution that has not fundamentally changed family dynamics. Men and women
may not be fully equal yet, but the rules of the game have been profoundly
and irreversibly changed.
Key Evidence of Convergence in the Work-Family Balancing that Men
and Women Do:
* In the USA,
men's absolute and proportionate contributions to household tasks increased
substantially over the past three decades, substantially lessening the
burden on women. National cross-time series of time-use diary studies
show that from the 1960s to the 21st century, men's contribution to
housework doubled, increasing from about 15 to over 30 percent of the total
(Robinson & Godbey 1999; Fisher et al 2006). By the early 21st century,
the average full- or part-time employed US
married woman with children was doing two hours less housework than in
1965.
* The most dramatic increase in men's
contributions has been to child care. Between 1965 and 2003, men tripled
the amount of time they spent in child care (Bianchi, Robinson and Milkie
2005; Fisher et al 2006). Fathers in two-parent households now spend
more time with co-resident children than at any time since large-scale
longitudinally comparable data were collected (Coltrane 2004; Pleck and
Masciadrelli 2003). In this period, women also increased their time spent
in childcare and interaction with children, doubling it over the period
from 1965 to 2003. This mutual increase in child care appears to be related
to higher standards for both mothers and fathers about spending time with
children.
* These trends are occurring in much of the
Western industrial world, suggesting a worldwide movement toward men and
women sharing the responsibilities of both work-life and family life. Data
from 20 industrialized countries over the period 1965-2003 reveal an
overall cross-country increase in men's proportional contribution to family
work (including housework, child care and shopping), from less than
one-fifth in 1965 to more than a third by 2003 (Hook 2006).
* Furthermore, an analysis of couple's relative
contribution to housework in Britain found a steady growth from the 1960s
to the 1990s in the percentage of families where the man contributed MORE
time to family work (including housework, shopping and child care) than the
woman. This trend was particularly marked among full-time employed couples
(Sullivan 2006).
* There is, overall, a striking convergence of
work-family patterns for US men and women. While the total hours of work
(including both paid and family work) done by men and women have remained
roughly equal since the 1960s (Fisher et al 2006) - in particular for
parents (Bianchi et al 2006) - there has been a growing convergence in the
hours that both women and men spend in the broad categories of paid work,
family work and leisure (Fisher et al 2006). Women's paid work time has
significantly increased, while that of men has decreased.
Correspondingly, women's time devoted to housework has decreased, while the
time men spend in family work of all kinds has increased.
Will men's contributions continue to increase?
We believe that increases in men's involvement in
family work are part of a continuing rather than a stalled revolution, and
are likely to continue as more women join the labor force. Men share more
family work if their female partners are employed more hours, earn more
money, and have spent more years in education.
In addition, whatever a man's original resistance
to sharing, we have found that men's contributions to family work increase
over time: The longer their female partners have been in paid employment,
the more family work they are likely to do (Gershuny et al 2005).
All these trends are likely to continue for the
foreseeable future. According to national opinion polls, belief in
gender equality within families continues to gain acceptance among both men
and women. And with greater belief in gender equality and more equal
sharing of tasks comes the possibility of more equal and open negotiation
about who does what in families (Sullivan 2006). This should have
positive outcomes for the families involved, since research shows that when
men do more of the housework, women's perceptions of fairness and marital
satisfaction rise and the couple experiences less marital conflict
(Coltrane, 2000). Supporting the general association between sharing
housework and healthier marriages, Cooke (2007) found that couples in the USA
who have more equal divisions of labor are less likely to divorce than
couples where one partner specializes in breadwinning and the other partner
specializes in family work.
Conclusion: not a call for complacency!
American couples have made remarkable progress in
working out mutually satisfying arrangements to share the responsibilities
of breadwinning and family care. And polls continue to show increasing
approval of such arrangements. So the revolution in gender aspirations and
behaviors has not stalled. But progress in getting employers to accommodate
workers' desires has been less encouraging, as high earners are forced to
work ever longer hours, while less affluent earners face wage or benefit
cuts and layoffs that often force them to work more than one job. Aside
from winning paid parental leave laws in Washington and California (with
similar bills being considered in Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and
New York), families have made little headway in getting the kind of family
friendly policies that are taken for granted in most other advanced
industrial countries. Even as American couples' beliefs and desires about
gender equity have grown to be among the highest in the world, America's
work policies and social support systems for working parents are among the
lowest. (See "How Does the US
Rank in Work Policies for Families?
http://www.contemporaryfamilies.org/subtemplate.php?=briefingPapers&ext=workpolicies
).
All in all, the "stalled revolution" in America
is not taking place in families but in the highest circles of our economic
and political elites.
For more information on this report, contact:
Scott Coltrane, Professor of Sociology, University of California
Riverside
(951) 827-2443; cell: (951) 858-1831
scott.coltrane@ucr.edu
Professor Oriel Sullivan, Department of Behavioral Sciences, Ben
Gurion University
sullivan@bgu.ac.il, +972 86472056
Other Perspectives:
Understanding the Asymmetry of Gender Change, by Paula England, Stanford
University
Sullivan's and Coltrane's paper gives us evidence that men's roles at
home are changing, though more slowly than many people had initially
expected. The slowness, I believe, is part of a broader pattern of
deep asymmetry in gender-related change such that women move into
traditionally male roles more than men move into traditionally female
activities. For every one hour women have increased their paid work, men
have increased their household work or child care only a small fraction of
an hour. For every hundred women going into a male-typical college
major or profession, perhaps one man goes into a female-typical
field. For every hundred parents encouraging daughters to play
soccer, perhaps one encourages a son to play with dolls. Until we
change how much culture, government, and employers reward the activities and
jobs women historically did, it will be hard to get men to do them.
Paula England, Professor of Sociology, Stanford
University: 650-723-4912;
pengland@stanford.edu
Extra Barriers to Equality for African-American couples, by Shirley
Hill, University of Kansas
The skewed gender ratio, or shortage of "marriageable"
men, enhances the power of married African American men, while
economic hardship makes the issue of marital equality almost moot among the
thousands of low-income African Americans who simply lack adequate
resources to marry. Neither the long tradition of dual-income families, nor
the fact that African American women often have a higher occupational
status than their partners, has negated the fact that women still perform
most of the child care and housework in Black families.
Shirley A. Hill, Professor, Department of Sociology, University
of Kansas
785-864-9420; hill@ku.edu
A Polarization of Experiences? by Stephanie Coontz, The Evergreen State
College:
We have seen tremendous progress in building fairer, more flexible
marriages. But fair and flexible marriages require better negotiating
skills than marriages based on rigid rules. And it is sometimes hard for
men to be flexible when their traditional sources of masculinity are under
attack, as is true of the large numbers of men who have faced falling real
wages and job security in the past decade. This may explain why marriages
are becoming more stable for college-educated and economically secure
couples but less stable for poorly educated and economically struggling men
and women.
Stephanie Coontz, Professor of History and Family Studies, The
Evergreen State College
360 556-9223; coontzs@msn.com
Parents Need to Get Out of the House Sometimes!, by Joshua Coleman,
Ph.D, Psychologist
Equitable sharing of housework is associated with higher levels of
marital satisfaction -- and sometimes more sex too! Wives report greater
feelings of sexual interest and affection for husbands who participate in
housework. Paradoxically, however, the increase in parenting hours on the
part of both husbands and wives may pose some threats to the couple
relationship since many couples have increased their time with their
children by eliminating or greatly reducing time for romance. This should
be cause for concern as regular date nights are associated with increased
marital quality and lower risk of divorce.
Joshua Coleman, Ph.D., Psychologist, Senior Fellow, CCF
Author: THE LAZY HUSBAND: How to Get Men to Do More Parenting and
Housework
drjoshuacoleman@comcast.net; 510 547 6500
Who Does the "Invisible" Household Work? by Pamela J.
Smock, University of Michigan
When it comes to responsibility for less "visible" aspects
of housework than chores or child care, the gender divide remains large in
most families. Women still tend to do the "emotional labor,"
noticing when things need to be discussed or resolved. They also do most of
the "household management" planning, buying presents for birthday
parties a child will be attending, scheduling doctor appointments, and
marking things that must be done on the calendar on the refrigerator door.
Finally, women still tend to do the "kin work," calling
relatives, arranging for holiday gatherings, sending holiday cards and so
on. Until men begin to take responsibility for invisible household work,
women will continue to shoulder more family work, and therefore to face
more constraints in their freedom to engage in paid work.
Pamela J. Smock, Professor of Sociology, University of Michigan
pjsmock@umich.edu; cell: 734-730-0377
What Do Fair Marriages Look Like? by Barbara Risman, University
of Illinois, Chicago
I studied completely several marriages that were completely equal in
my book, Gender Vertigo. I found couples where men completely shared the
emotional labor, nurturing and management functions of housework and
childcare, as well as the physical work. Egalitarian families tend to be
marked by exceptionally strong friendship between husband and wife, equal
status outside the home, in the labor market, and, at least for the
fathers, flexible jobs. Unfortunately, one barrier to equality in the home
is that few fathers have flexible enough jobs to do as much family sharing
as many want to do.
Barbara J. Risman, Professor and Chair, Sociology, University
of Illinois at Chicago
312 996 3074 or 919 349 0090; brisman@uic.edu
Do Wives Have to Buy Their Way out of Housework? by Sanjiv Gupta, Univ.
of Massachusetts-Amherst
I agree that men's participation in housework and child care has
increased significantly, but a 1999 study showed that when couples married,
men tended to reduce their time spent on housework, while women increased
their housework time. Furthermore, among married women employed full time,
only their own earnings (not their husbands') are associated with
reductions in time spent on the most common household chores, such as
cooking and cleaning. This may be because they use their money to purchase
substitutes for housework, suggesting that families still feel it is
women's responsibility to either do -- or arrange for someone else to do --
the bulk of household chores.
Sanjiv Gupta, Assoc. Prof. of Sociology, Univ. of
Massachusetts-Amherst
sangupta@soc.umass.edu, 413 577 1773
Gender Equality in America:
Glass half empty or half full?, Virginia Rutter, Framingham State
College
Sullivan and Coltrane remind us of the good news about men and
housework. But the current election rhetoric reveals that misogyny
still runs deep
in American culture--google Hillary Clinton and you'll quickly get
vivid illustrations of what I'm talking about. Many Americans still
question whether a woman can be a good worker and a good wife or mother at
the same time, and for many women, the pressure of such social skepticism
(and the self-doubts it produces) leaves the gender revolution at home
still high on the to-do list, not the have-done list.
Virginia Rutter, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Framingham
State College, Mass
vrutter@gmail.com 508 626 4863
The Council on Contemporary Families, based at the University
of Illinois at Chicago,
is a non-profit, non-partisan association of prominent family researchers
and clinicians whose aim is to make accessible to the press and public
recent research on family formation, marriage, divorce, childhood and
family diversity. To receive periodic briefing papers and fact sheets,
contact Stephanie Coontz, Director of Research and Public Education, at
coontzs@msn.com.
MARK YOUR CALENDARS FOR CCF CONFERENCE
April 25-26: Family Issues in Contention
The 11th annual conference of the Council on Contemporary Families,
to be held at the University of Illinois,
Chicago, will explore the
latest research and scholarly debates about the causes and consequences of
youthful sex, adoption, cohabitation, and divorce.
The program includes:
-- A panel on the "hooking-up" patterns of today's youth,
with new research and
commentators from diverse perspectives.
-- Another workshop on the controversial question, "Is
Transracial and
Transnational Adoption the Right Policy for Parents? Children?
Society?"
-- Still another panel of demographers and clinical psychologists
examines whether cohabitation is "good" for love or for
marriage.
-- And in an ongoing consideration of a hotly contested question, the
latest
thoughts of researchers and clinicians on divorce versus
"sticking it
out."
Please watch our website, www.contemporaryfamilies.org for conference
updates. Press may receive complimentary registration by contacting
Stephanie Coontz, Director of Research and Public Education, at
coontzs@msn.com.
Paper References :
Bianchi, Suzanne M., John P. Robinson
and Melissa A. Milkie. (2006). Changing Rhythms of American Family
Life (Rose Series in Sociology). New York:
Russell Sage Foundation Publications.
Coltrane, Scott (1996). Family Man: Fatherhood,
Housework and Gender Equity. New York:
Oxford University
Press.
Coltrane, Scott (2000). Research on household
labor: modeling and measuring the social embeddedness of routine family
work. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 62, pp.1209-1233.
Coltrane, Scott (2004). Fathering: paradoxes,
contradictions and dilemmas. Pp.224-243 in Handbook of Contemporary
Families: Considering the Past, Contemplating the Future. Marilyn
Coleman and Lawrence Ganong
(Eds.). Thousand Oaks, CA:
Sage.
Cooke, Lynn P. (2006). "Doing" gender in
context: household bargaining and risk of divorce in Germany
and the United States.
American Journal of Sociology Volume 112, Number 2, pp. 442-72
Fisher, Kimberley,
Muriel Egerton , Jonathan I. Gershuny and John P. Robinson. (2006). Gender
convergence in the American Heritage Time Use Study (AHTUS). Social
Indicators Research. DOI 10.1007/s11205-006-9017-y
Gershuny, Jonathan I. (2000). Changing
Times: Work and Leisure in Postindustrial Society. Oxford:
Oxford University
Press
Gershuny, Jonathan I., Michael Bittman and John
Brice. (2005). Exit, voice, and suffering: Do couples adapt to changing
employment patterns? Journal of Marriage and Family, 67, pp. 656-665
Hook, Jennifer L. (2006). Care in context: Men's
unpaid work in 20 countries, 1965-2003. American Sociological Review,
Volume 71, Number 4, pp. 639-660.
Jacobs, Jerry A. and Kathleen Gerson, (2004). The
Time Divide: Work, Family and Gender Inequality. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard
University Press.
Pleck, Joseph H. and Brian P. Masciadrelli.
(2003). Paternal involvement: Levels, sources, and consequences. In Michael
E. Lamb (Ed.). The Role of the Father in Child Development (4th ed.) New
York: John Wiley.
Sullivan, Oriel (2006). Changing Gender Relations,
Changing Families: Tracing the Pace of Change over Time (Gender Lens
Series). New York: Rowman
& Littlefield.
Sullivan, Oriel and Jonathan I. Gershuny. (2001).
Cross-national changes in time-use: some sociological (hi)stories
re-examined. British Journal of Sociology, Volume 52, Number 4, pp. 331-347
March 2008
