In 19th century America, some women decried the opportunity for scholarly education as rebellion against religion and predicted a grim decline in the quality of life, home, and hearth for American families and for American culture and politics. In particular, women who opposed scholarly education argued that God had not created men and women…

Examined relationship between wives' (N=147) employment status and their versus their husbands' (N=154) time spent on household tasks. Compared adjusted mean time that women and men spent in specific household tasks. Found employed women spent less time on female-typed tasks than full-time homemakers. Found husbands' total housework time not…

Investigated husbands' contributions to household labor in first-married couples with biological children and in remarried couples with biological children only, stepchildren only, and both biological and stepchildren. Absolute and relative contributions to total household labor did not differ significantly across family types, but husbands in…

Interviews regarding sex-role attitudes, sex-role behaviors, fertility, and fertility preferences were conducted with currently married women. Traditionalism of attitudes had a positive effect while relative performance of feminine tasks had a negative effect on total number of children wanted. (Author)

Using data from study of young families in an affluent Hong Kong housing complex, author contends that role reorganization within nuclear family and, specifically, changing role of Chinese wives, has created a new family structure which reinforces rather than rejects traditional norms of shared residence and reciprocal aid among kin. (Author)

Used data from nationally representative sample (n=2,528) to examine division of household labor in first-marriage families, stepfamilies, families headed by divorced mothers, and families headed by never-married mothers. Findings indicated that, across family types and regardless of women's employment status, women performed two to three times…

Participants in this study were couples representing three employment groups. The first, mono-employed, consisted of couples with an employed husband and a wife who was at home full time. The dual employed group comprised an employed husband and wife, and the third group were employed husbands and wives both of whom had doctoral degrees.…

In the last decade, a number of variant family forms have arisen. One contention is that these experiments are a sign of strain in the traditional nuclear family and an indication of changes it must undergo in order to adapt to contemporary society. (Author/WI)

The author spent a year doing a participant observation and in-depth interviewing project in southeastern Colorado. Although exploratory, the material provides an initial sketch of the female farming population. (BR)

Examined the effects of divorce and maternal employment status on mother's and children's sex-role attitudes in 60 families. Results showed working mothers, irrespective of marital status, were more liberal than nonworking mothers. Children of single-parent families appeared to be more liberal in their sex-role orientation. (JAC)

Compared mothers (n=1,433) and fathers (n=128) in one-parent families on time spent with children and in household work. Found that family work in one-parent households, like family work in two-parent households, is gendered, consistent with theories indicating parenting behavior is gendered. (JBJ)

The rapid increase in the number of families with two wage-earners has contributed significantly to changes in family structure and function in the past three decades; a current belief holds that wives who share the income-earner role have a right to expect more assistance from their husbands with such family tasks as meal preparations, cleaning,…

Inspite of the tremendous increase in the burden of market work faced by married American women in the last decade, the differential in household work time between husbands and wives still persists. The results of this study assert that the differences in socioeconomic characteristics between husbands and wives explain only part of that…

Suburban middle class American situation comedies of the 1950s and 1960s idealized the postwar family ensemble with its unproblematic achievement of quality family life. The homemaker as portrayed in these sitcoms was positioned at the center of the postwar consumer economy by the consumer product industry, which built its economy on defining the…