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…

Unpaid household labor is still predominantly performed by women, despite dramatic increases in female labor force participation over the past 50 years. For this article, interviews with 76 highly skilled women who had returned to the workforce following the birth of children were analyzed to capture reflexive understandings of the balance of paid…

Motivated by the trend of women spending more time in paid labor and the general speedup of everyday life, the authors explore whether the resulting time crunch affects sexual frequency among married couples. Although prior research has examined the associations between relationship quality and household labor time, few have examined a dimension…

This study examines earnings losses associated with motherhood using longitudinal administrative Canadian data. Contrary to the endogenous motherhood hypothesis, the author found no dips in earnings for women during their prechildbirth years. Although the results show that earnings losses incurred by mothers in the year of childbirth and the year…

Most women must decide whether to work for pay while mothering or make mothering their sole social role. Often this decision is portrayed in terms of whether they will be "stay-at-home" and presumably "full-time" mothers, or "working mothers" and therefore ones who prioritize paid work over caregiving. Inferred within this construction is women's…

This study examines how industry and occupation sex segregation are related to the use of flexible scheduling policies and perceptions of the career repercussions of using such policies. The analysis is performed on data from the 2002 National Study of the Changing Workforce (N = 2,810). Findings suggest that the percentage of women per industry…

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…

In this article life history data from the U.S. National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH), and the Dutch survey on Older Adults' Living Arrangements and Social Networks (NESTOR-LSN) are used to shed light on the various pathways leading to and associated with childlessness, and the proportions of men and women who have followed a…

Using data from a random sample of 580 midwestern women, the authors explore the association between lifetime infertility and life satisfaction. Past research shows lower life satisfaction among those seeking help for infertility. The authors find no direct effects of lifetime infertility, regardless of perception of a problem, on life…

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.…

Integrating three theoretical explanations for declining rates of marriage in Japan, the authors develop hypotheses in which linkages between benefits of coresidence with parents and marriage timing are moderated by women's own socioeconomic characteristics. To evaluate these hypothesized interactive relationships, data from a panel survey of…

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.…

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.…

Some scholars have suggested that it is the "most advantaged" children, the children of high income households or who have high cognitive ability, who are negatively affected by early maternal employment. If this were true, less advantaged children would not be affected as strongly. Findings indicate that in terms of effects on cognitive…

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…