Care in Context: Men's Unpaid Work in 20 Countries, 1965–2003

Abstract

By situating men within the country and time period in which they live, social scientists are better able to understand men's housework and child care behaviors. The author proposes that national context, conceptualized here as women's employment practices and policies, influences men's unpaid work behaviors by shaping the benefits of specialization, the terms of bargaining, and the ease of adhering to gender ideologies and norms. Using 44 time-use surveys from 20 countries (spanning 1965 to 2003) combined with original national-level data, the author utilizes multilevel models to test hypotheses regarding the relationship between national context and men's unpaid work behaviors. She finds that men's unpaid work time increases with national levels of women's employment. Furthermore, the effect of children on men's unpaid work time depends on women's national employment hours, the length of available parental leave, and men's eligibility to take parental leave, which indicates that particular public policies affect men in specific household situations. The analyses document the importance of national context for the unpaid work behaviors of all men, especially fathers, and shift the research focus from the attributes of individual men to the structures that hinder and facilitate men's unpaid work.