Husbands' and wives' household work: moving towards egalitarianism?

Abstract

Whether husbands are increasing their time in household tasks, especially when their wives are employed, has been a topic of debate in recent years. Several studies have found that husbands are participating in more child care now than in the past. But are husbands also doing other tasks now? Is there any relationship between the amounts of time that husbands and wives allocate to various household tasks? Are there any weekday versus weekend differences?A small sample of husbands and wives recorded their time spent in various activities for 7 consecutive days. The findings reveal that wives spent more time in general doing household tasks than did their husbands. Employed wives and their husbands both decreased their total time in household work, compared with full‐time homemakers and their husbands. At weekends, however, both employed wives and homemakers decreased their overall time in household work while the husbands increased theirs. The t‐test revealed that at weekends there were no significant differences in the times allocated to various household tasks by employed wives and their husbands, and significant differences only in time spent in child care and food preparation/clean‐up by homemakers and their spouses.There appears to be a more egalitarian approach by husbands and wives to household tasks at weekends than on weekdays, even when the wives are not employed. Although these findings should not be generalized to the population, they indicate an intriguing possible trend which deserves further investigation.