Outsourcing of Domestic Tasks

Abstract

The outsourcing of domestic tasks is an important strategy for coping with the competing time claims of the family and the workplace. Previous research explained the use of domestic help mainly in terms of financial and time constraints. In this article, we conceptualize household work as producing not only goods but also direct utility, and we argue that the more pleasure household members take in doing domestic work, the less they outsource it. Using the Dutch Time Competition Survey (N = 736), we find that if partners enjoy maintenance, cleaning, cooking, or child care, they are less likely to outsource these tasks, controlling for time and monetary resources and gender-role expectations. A woman's preferences are more important for the outsourcing of cleaning and child care, whereas a man's preferences are more important for the outsourcing of home maintenance. Cooking is less likely to be outsourced when both men and women find it pleasurable to cook themselves.

Domestic Outsourcing, Housework Shares and Subjective Time Pressure: Gender Differences in the Correlates of Hiring Help

“…Regular paid in-home childcare is rare in Australia, but formal nonparental childcare is associated with reductions of maternal supervisory childcare time (Bittman et al 2004;Craig and Powell 2013). Our findings are consistent with the findings of Van der Lippe et al (2004) who found that, in Dutch households, domestic outsourcing reduces women's cleaning time.…”

“…Since most men do little indoor domestic work, outsourcing these tasks may not affect their time allocation, as found by Van der Lippe et al (2004). But if outsourcing is directed at tasks more typically done by men, we may observe negative associations with their domestic time.…”

“…For example, if outsourcing is an effective labor saving strategy, we would expect employing a cleaner to impact more on women's domestic time than men's. This has been found in the Netherlands with domestic help reducing women's time on cleaning by about 1.5 h per week, but having no effect on men's time on cleaning (Van der Lippe et al 2004). On the other hand, the time relief gained by women who purchased cleaning services has been found to be marginal in France (Windebank 2007) and the USA (Killewald 2011).…”

“…Furthermore, since women typically do more indoor work such as cleaning and laundry, while men do more outdoor work (Baxter 2002), we could expect these types of outsourcing to have different associations with housework time by gender. Household appliances, such as microwaves, dishwashers and dryers, have been found to differentially save time by gender, and domestic outsourcing may operate similarly if we consider differences by type of task outsourced (Van der Lippe et al 2004). For example, if outsourcing is an effective labor saving strategy, we would expect employing a cleaner to impact more on women's domestic time than men's.…”

“…Again, however, associations may not be straightforward. Households that are both able to afford paid help and have a demand for it, may be more likely to be those in which women earn a substantial proportion of the household income (Van der Lippe et al 2004;Baxter et al 2009). In these households men may feel the need to engage in processes of gender deviance neutralisation (Brines 1994;Greenstein 2000;Bittman et al 2003) by doing less domestic work.…”