Wives' Employment Hours and Spousal Participation in Family Work

This longitudinal investigation of spousal division of labor examined whether wives' and husbands' proportional and absolute levels of child care and household chores would be related to wives' paid work hours. Participants were wives and husbands from 104 Canadian dual-earner families who completed questionnaires in February 1988, August 1988, and February 1989. Within-time results show that wives' longer employment hours were linked to their lower proportional share of child care and lower absolute levels of household chores and to husbands' higher proportional share of child care. There was some evidence that increases over time in wives' employment hours were related to increases in husbands' participation in child care and household chores.