Gender, High- and Low-Schedule-Control Housework Tasks, and Psychological Distress

Abstract

In this analysis, with data collected from a random sample of 265 employed dual-earner couples, we estimated the association between time spent on housework tasks on one hand and psychological distress on the other. Based on the literature relating job control to mental health outcomes, we hypothesized that hours spent in low-schedule-control tasks, but not total hours spent in housework tasks or hours spent in high-schedule-control tasks, would be associated with psychological distress. Further, we hypothesized that absolute but not proportional time in low-schedule-control tasks would be related to distress. After controlling for age, gender, education, occupational prestige, number of children, preschool children, gender role ideology, marital role quality, and total number of hours in paid employment, all hypotheses were supported. Finally, as hypothesized these relationships were not moderated by gender.

Gender, Division of Unpaid Family Work and Psychological Distress in Dual-Earner Families

“…Based on the work of Barnett and Shen [21], housework tasks were further divided into high schedule control tasks (e.g., doing outdoor tasks, paying bills, and maintaining vehicles) and low schedule control tasks (e.g., preparing meals, washing dishes, cleaning house, shopping, and washing and ironing). Thus, two additional measures were constructed: 1) perceived relative time spent in high-schedule-control tasks, and 2) perceived relative time spent in low-schedule-control tasks.…”

“…For example, for women, studies have found greater absolute time spent in family work to be associated with poorer mental health, [12][13][14] better mental health, but only up to a particular threshold of hours [15], and unrelated to mental health [8,16,17]. Similarly, several studies have reported that the more proportionate time women spend in household labor relative to their partner, the greater their depression or psychological distress [15,17,18], whereas others have reported no such relationship [12,[19][20][21]. Although men are less often included as participants in studies of family labour and well-being [18,19,22], men's mental health, on average, is less likely to be associated with the division of family work [8,16,21], though exceptions have been noted [12].…”

“…Thus, like paid work, spending time in certain family work tasks may be a qualitatively different experience than spending time in others. Goldberg and Perry-Jenkins [19] claim that understanding of the relationship between family work and mental health has been impeded by the tendency of researchers to only include measures of housework [12,21] or to combine questions on child rearing and housework into one measure, so that the independent associations of each with mental health, if present, cannot be determined [15,18,29]. The few studies which have considered child rearing and housework separately suggest that an unequal division of child rearing may be more strongly associated with women's psychological distress than an unequal division of housework [20,22,30], though exceptions have been reported [16,19].…”

“…The performance of high-and low-schedule-control activities is highly gendered within households, with women typically spending more hours on low-schedule-control tasks and men on high-schedule-control tasks [5,7]. Control over work activities has been identified as an important resource for promoting health and well-being in the job stress literature [30,31], and some evidence suggests its importance in family work as well [8,21]. For example, in one study of dual earner couples, for both husbands and wives, more time spent performing low-schedule-control tasks was associated with greater distress, whereas the amount of time spent on high-schedule-control tasks was unrelated to mental health outcomes [21].…”

“…Control over work activities has been identified as an important resource for promoting health and well-being in the job stress literature [30,31], and some evidence suggests its importance in family work as well [8,21]. For example, in one study of dual earner couples, for both husbands and wives, more time spent performing low-schedule-control tasks was associated with greater distress, whereas the amount of time spent on high-schedule-control tasks was unrelated to mental health outcomes [21]. Although it is often assumed in the literature that it is the routine, low-schedule control housework activities that are most harmful to well-being [5], little research, with a few exceptions [8,21], has systematically tested this hypothesis.…”