Creating a happy family with a favorable psychological climate is important both for the individual and the society as a whole. One of the factors, that influence the creation of a welfare family, is the content of the spouses' concepts of the family, its functions and their possible distribution. The main purpose of this article is to identify…

The developmental course, family correlates, and adjustment implications of youth housework participation from age 8-18 were examined. Mothers, fathers, and 2 siblings from 201 European American families provided questionnaire and/or daily diary data on 6 occasions across 7 years. Multilevel modeling within an accelerated longitudinal design…

Despite many studies on the gendered division of housework, there is little research on how couples divide the work of household management. Relative resource theories of household bargaining inform analyses of who does the housework, but their applicability to household management is unclear, if only because management responsibility may be…

Unpaid household labor is still predominantly performed by women, despite dramatic increases in female labor force participation over the past 50 years. For this article, interviews with 76 highly skilled women who had returned to the workforce following the birth of children were analyzed to capture reflexive understandings of the balance of paid…

This article uses recent data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (N = 5,220) to explore gender differences in the extent to which adults in their 50s and 60s provide informal help to their adult children, elderly parents, and friends. We find that both men and women report very high levels of helping kin and nonkin alike, although women do more…

This paper presents new evidence of the causal effect of family size on child quality in a developing-country context. We estimate the impact of family size on child labor and educational outcomes among Brazilian children and young adults by exploring the exogenous variation of family size driven by the presence of twins in the family. Using the…

Little research has investigated the division of child care and housework in adoptive or lesbian/gay parent families, yet these contexts "control for" family characteristics such as biological relatedness and parental gender differences known to be linked to family work. This study examined predictors (measured preadoption) of the division of…

The current study examined how desire for marriage and children related to anticipated chore involvement for both men and women. An online survey was completed by 466 college students recruited from multiple colleges and universities in Virginia. Participants provided information about their own desire for marriage and children, expectations for…

This study explored whether there was a discrepancy between young adults' ideal and expected participation in household and child care chores as well as what variables predicted expectations for future chore division. Three-hundred fifty-eight unmarried, heterosexual participants with no children completed an online questionnaire assessing the…

Explanations for married men's wage premium often emphasize greater market productivity due to a gendered division of household labor, though this "specialization thesis" has been insufficiently interrogated. Using data from Wave 2 of the National Survey of Families and Households (N = 972), this paper examines the relationship between wages and…

Research on the division of household labor has typically examined the role of time availability, relative resources, and gender ideology. We explore the gendered meaning of domestic work by examining the role of men's and women's attitudes toward household labor. Using data from the Dutch Time Competition Survey (N = 732), we find that women have…

The study examined boys' and girls' autonomy of choice of activities in the after-school hours with samples of children from two different countries. Preadolescent children from Taiwan (n = 289) and the United States (n = 195) completed a questionnaire on their usual after-school activities indicating who determines the choice of any particular…

We examine the effects of transitions in marital and parenthood status on 1,091 men's and women's housework hours using two waves of data from an Australian panel survey titled Negotiating the Life Course. We examine transitions between cohabitation and marriage, and from cohabitation or marriage to separation, as well as transitions to first and…

This study examines a sample of 299 advertisements from 4 of the top 10 circulated magazines of 2005 to see how contemporary advertising depicts household labor. Modeling after previous studies that examined the depiction of gender in family advertising, this study seeks to determine whether advertising reflects the changes in families that have…

Using data from 17,636 respondents in 28 nations, this research uses multilevel modeling to compare the reported division of household labor and factors affecting it for currently married and currently cohabiting couples. Cohabiting men report performing more household labor than do married men, and cohabiting women report performing less…