Perceived Housework Equity, Marital Happiness, and Divorce in Dual-Earner Households

Abstract

This study uses a nationally representative sample of individuals involved in dual-earner marriages to examine the relationship between perceived fairness of housework completion, marital happiness, and divorce. The authors expected to find that perceived inequality in the division of housework causes tension between spouses that leads to decreased marital quality for both men and women. They further speculated that an unfair division of household labor might contribute to a greater likelihood of divorce. Results indicate that perceived inequity in the division of household labor is negatively associated with both husbands[#X2019] and wives[#X2019]reported marital happiness but is positively associated with the odds of divorce among wives only. Little evidence indicates that marital happiness mediates this relationship. The authors propose that unfair perceptions of the division of household labor not only decrease women[#X2019]s marital quality but also lead to role strain that makes them more likely to end unsatisfying marriages.

Surveying transitional experience and subjective well-being: Income, work, family

“…Given the fact of being socially accepted and "fitting the norm" is found to be particularly important for women (e.g. Frisco and Williams, 2003), all above-mentioned should be keep in mind, while evaluating an individual well-being impact of the choices of partners.…”

“…Like in developed countries, an overload with work of one of the spouses, usually wife, may provoke feeling of dissatisfaction or even health problems, decrease quality of marriage and increase the likelihood of divorce (e.g. Frisco and Williams, 2003). Given the traditional roles of women, it is unsurprisingly that divorce has a negative subjective satisfaction impact on men but not on women (Poland, 1990, Angelescu, 2008, while the average satisfaction is damaged by widowhood for both genders.…”

“I Just Can’t Clean the Bathroom as Well as You Can!”: Communicating Domestic Labor Task Equity-Resistance and Equity-Restoring Strategies Among Married Individuals

“…In the case of the division of domestic labor, equality occurs when each relational partner completes the same tasks or proportion of a task, contributing to the relationship (Frisco & Williams, 2003).…”

What Makes Russian Women (Un)Happy? A Closer Look at the Family

“…Moreover, women traditionally perform the most tedious and routine low-control indoor component of housework. All these what lead to higher levels of psychological distress, feeling of dissatisfaction or even health problems, decrease the quality of marriage and increase the likelihood of divorce (Hochschild and Machung, 1990;Baxter, 2000;Frisco and Williams, 2003). Then the "unusual" relative unhappiness of Russian women is explained just by the fact that they perform more housework and have less bargaining power within their households, is it not?…”

“…For women, a "perceived fairness" of tasks and time distribution is even more important for the well-being evaluation than hours actually worked at home (e.g. Baxter, 2000;Frisco and Williams, 2003). Women compare a housework sharing in the own family with a reference group of other women, and then, can perceive the personal situation as "unfair" (Kluwer et al, 1996;Freudenthaler and Mikula, 1998) while men tend to compare themselves to an imaginary man who performed even less housework, and hence to perceive the situation as more than "fair" (Himsel and Goldberg, 2003).…”