Chinese and South Korean children’s moral reasoning regarding the fairness of a gendered household labor distribution.

Abstract

This study explored age-related changes in Chinese and Korean children's fairness judgments and reasoning regarding the gendered division of household labor. The majority of previous research on this issue has focused on adults' experiences and has been conducted in Western countries. Interviews were conducted with 133 children, 65 Chinese and 68 South Korean, ages 9 -11 (N ϭ 48), 12-14 (N ϭ 43), and 16 -18 (N ϭ 42). Despite country differences in women's involvement in the workforce, in both countries women do most of the housework. Most participants across ages evaluated a hypothetical scenario in which the mother did most of the work as unfair and endorsed a hypothetical scenario in which housework was divided evenly as fair. Developmental effects were found with younger children in both countries employing more equality justifications and adolescents providing more social convention justifications. In both countries, children described their mother as doing most of the housework and, in contrast with their judgments about hypothetical situations, were evenly divided overall in their evaluations of whether this unequal distribution in their actual families was fair. Korean children were more likely to view their family's division as unfair than Chinese children and were more likely to employ equality justifications in support of those judgments. Unexpectedly, across countries moral reasoning in the form of expectations of equity rather than gender stereotyping was employed to justify an unequal division of labor. This study's findings suggest the value of investigating children's fairness judgments and moral reasoning regarding both hypothetical and actual situations.

Emerging adults’ judgments about helping at home: Situational and experiential sources of variability

“…When judging about helping in their own homes, participants were more likely to say that female household members should have been responsible for meal preparation more than male members. This finding is consistent with prior work around the acceptance of a family's gendered division of household work (Midgette, 2020a, 2020b). Gendered ideas about household work, when accepted by a new generation, may perpetuate gender inequalities in household contributions.…”

“…However, gender differences in their experienced responsibilities were far more pronounced. On average, participants indicated that mothers should have been less responsible than they were, and that fathers should have been more responsible (Midgette, 2020a). The ethnic and gender differences in these judgments uncover ways in which judgments about helping depend on one's experiential background.…”

“…Importantly, children do not accept the practices of their family or community automatically (Midgette, 2020a; Turiel & Wainryb, 2000). Although most youth will grow up to agree with their parents on many issues, their experiences may also lead them to reject some household arrangements, for instance because they think that women in their family carry an unfair burden (Midgette & D'Andrea, 2021).…”

Chinese Youth’s Reported Social and Moral Transgressions and Strategies for Self-Correction

“…Future studies may include other cultural samples to further explore this issue. Moreover, while pragmatic considerations have been noted by domain theorists as an important consideration in making decisions (Midgette, 2020; Smetana et al, 2014), and were found to justify many of the “other” transgressive events, we also found that many participants were also reporting transgression events that were purely concerned with their academic outcomes. This finding is in keeping with the fact that Chinese children and adolescents are strongly encouraged to focus on academics and spend the majority of their time studying (Chen et al, 2003; Ho, 1996; Li & Hein, 2019).…”

The quality of life in patients with Parkinson's disease: Focus on gender difference

“…Finally, as shown in other studies (Behari et al., 2005; Hristova et al., 2009), female patients’ poor QoL may be a result of their more active participation in everyday household activities such as cooking, increasing concern for poor performance. There is substantial research showing that women do more housework than men in East Asian countries (Hu & Mu, 2021; Midgette, 2020; Oshio et al., 2012). Therefore, although our study did not assess the participation of female patients in housework, we still considered it as a possible reason why the QoL of female patients is lower than that of men.…”