Despite many studies on the gendered division of housework, there is little research on how couples divide the work of household management. Relative resource theories of household bargaining inform analyses of who does the housework, but their applicability to household management is unclear, if only because management responsibility may be…

Little is known about the spousal support received by married executive women and the support behaviors that they value. This article details the results of a qualitative study of 20 senior and executive-level women, with the aim of understanding their received and valued spousal support. An inductive typology was developed through semistructured…

Investigates whether financial agreements between husbands and wives, cost of child care, mothers' wages, and sources of income, rather than aggregate income, affect a mother's decision to use child care. Results show that for working mothers, the price of child care is what matters, not their wages; for nonemployed mothers, the reverse is true.…

The authors investigate the direction of the relationship between marital happiness and wives' full-time employment using the 1987 to 1988 and 1992 to 1994 waves of the National Survey of Families and Households. First, the authors predict change in wives' employment between the two waves using marital happiness and other Time 1 characteristics.…

Drawing on data from a panel study of White women spanning 31 years, the analyses examine the influence of women's employment on the gendered division of household labor. Multiple dimensions of women's employment are investigated, including accumulated employment histories, current employment status, current employment hours, and relative income.…

Examined relationship between wives' (N=147) employment status and their versus their husbands' (N=154) time spent on household tasks. Compared adjusted mean time that women and men spent in specific household tasks. Found employed women spent less time on female-typed tasks than full-time homemakers. Found husbands' total housework time not…

Used national survey data from over 700 respondents to examine how wives' labor force participation affects extent to which families use market economy to provide goods and services traditionally produced by women. Found that full-time working wives were more likely than wives at home to purchase cleaning and meal preparation services. (Author/NB)

Used data from Panel Study of Income Dynamics to investigate process by which spouses allocate their labor between employment and housework. Findings indicated that both women's market and domestic labor were highly sensitive to family economy, whereas men's market labor was subject to macroeconomic structure and men's domestic labor was little…

Examined leisure time expenditures of married women in paid labor force. Found both active and passive leisure activities differentially affected by work. Estimated path model of amount of available leisure time, showing effects of paid labor time, age, children, and household labor time. Estimated that women's responsibilities for employment and…

This study examines whether the meaning of marital conflict and marital solidarity are affected by the transition to retirement, whether the retirement transition alters stability and variability of, and cross-spouse influences on, marital quality, and whether retirement influences latent means of marital quality. Data from both waves of the…

Data from a study of female retirees and their husbands indicate that the retirement of the wife does not always lead to a redistribution of household tasks, nor do all female retirees experience a full-time household role after retirement. Effects on the marital relationship are often positive. (Author)

Using data from a U.S. midwestern sample of mothers and fathers, the authors examine whether using workplace flexibility policies alters time spent in housework and child care. They hypothesize that an individual's policy use will lead to more time in domestic labor and that his or her spouse's policy use will lead to less time in domestic labor.…

This article presents an exploratory study that furthers our understanding of the functioning of two-career couples at midlife and, in particular, our understanding of the husband's contributions to family and household activities. More specifically, it addresses the following questions regarding dual-career couples: (a) Whose career has…

This historical study of divorce practice has only recently begun. Using Worcester County, Massachusetts as a test case, a preliminary hypothesis that explains the increasing frequency of divorce in terms of basic changes of American life, particularly the increased economic independence of women brought about by industrialization, is presented.…