Family Life
Sociologists have extensively studied the division of housework among families. Existing gender role stereotypes usually enforce the idea of housework as women’s work resulting in women doing most or all of the housework. Gradually, over a period of many years, the roles of women have changed in areas, such as employment, whereby women are increasingly becoming employed therefore affecting the division of housework. The following paper takes a look at research that has been done on the topic of the division of housework; it will discuss how housework is divided within households, and at the effects of satisfaction, employment and childcare on housework division. The manner in which housework is divided is usually predetermined by existing gender role stereotypes. Women tend to be associated with domestic tasks whereas males are associated with economic tasks. Women continue to work more hours than men on domestic tasks such as cooking and cleaning, and the sex segregation of housework typically means that husbands and wives define their domestic chores along sex-typical lines (Blair, 1991). The fact that some tasks are defined “men’s work” and others as “women’s work” is likely to reinforce traditional ge . . .
For sons, parent’s household labor patterns during their early years are significant determinants of sons’ household labor allocation many years later. Husbands however, reported lower levels of satisfaction when their wives did less housework than their own mother’s did, reflecting the persistence of social roles. Measuring the Division of Household Labor. Etaugh (1998) found that among parents employed full-time, they experienced more stress than those who worked reduced hours due to more demanding work and family roles. Journal of Family Issues, 12, 91-113. Men who are in “traditional” marriages, whereby they work outside the home and the woman works in the home, are less likely to complete what they perceive as an unfair share of housework due to traditional boundaries that are still in place. Satisfaction and Housework Division One typical finding about the division of housework was that women who did more housework than their husbands were less satisfied with the division of labor than men (Goldberg & Himsel, 2003). This however was not significant for men. Conclusively, Cunningham’s (2001) found that for both sons and daughters, parental behaviors early in the life course had long-term effects on the allocation of household work.
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