Spouses' family work participation and its relation to wives' occupational level

Past statistical and conceptual limitations may mistakenly overstate women's and men's unequal participation in family work. The present study used log-linear models to examine spouses' participation in household work and parenting and their perceptions of equity regarding this participation. Wives' occupational level, an important but often overlooked source of variation, was used to classify couples according to three family types—single-wage traditional (TR)—and two types of dual-wage families—dual-earner (DE) in which wives held jobs while husbands held jobs or careers, and dual-career (DC). Data were taken from a study of 81 couples of comparable socioeconomic status and age who had an adolescent child living at home. As hypothesized, results indicated more sharing of household work in dual-wage families than typically reported, particularly for DC families. Husbands and wives in all family types were largely in agreement regarding the distribution of responsibility for household and parenting tasks, but perceptions of equity varied by family type. Spouses with comparable perceptions of fairness reported higher marital satisfaction.Appreciation is expressed to Sue Lucas and Darl Lewis for their assistance with this study. Portions of this paper were presented at the Third Annual Meeting of the American Psychological Society, Washington, DC June, 1991.