Household Labor & The Routine Production of Gender

• Doing gender sustains and legitimizes existing gender relations.

• Would inappropriate gender activity challenge that legitimacy?

• Or when people fail to do gender appropriately, are their individual characters, motives, and predispositions called into question.

Shared Parenting

• Fathers said: • Father-infant interaction helped them

develop “deep emotional trust” • “It [childcare] was not something innate, it

was something to be learned.” • Most fathers not equal caregiver for

children under one year. • What does this tell us.

Practicality & Flexibility

• Couples said it makes sense to share labor and be flexible in division or labor.

• One mother said, [Being flexible and changing division of tasks] “keeps things interesting. I think that’s why its satisfying.”

• Studies show flexibility benefits relationships.

Ideology • Underlying Ideology: Child-centered &

equity ideals. • Child-centered: Placed high value on

children’s well-being • Equity ideals: Treated children as

inexperienced equals. [Cultural] • All said that no one should be forced to

perform a specific task b/c they were a man or woman

Divisions of Household Labor

• Sample couples can be characterized as sharing an unusually high proportion of house-work and child-care compared to others.

• But still partially conformed to traditional division of household labor.

Divisions of Household Labor

• 25% of tasks performed mainly by mothers included clothes care, meal planning, repetitive house cleaning.

• 20% of tasks performed mainly by fathers included outside chores, home repair, car maintenance, lawn care.

Managing Vs. Helping • Mothers were often the managers: told

husbands what to do and how to do it. • Husbands were helpers. • Some mothers found it difficult to share

household management; Did not like relinquishing control à This links housecleaning styles to essential gender differences.

• Managing housework becomes the woman’s domain

Adult Socialization Through Childrearing

• Parenting is an essential part of the mother’s nature but is a learned capacity for fathers.

• Couples talked about fathers being socialized to become nurturing parents.

Adult Socialization Through Child-Rearing

• Father: Described as being transformed by parenting experience, developing increased sensitivity.

• Evaluated by fathers adopting vocabulary of motives and feelings similar to mother’s.

• Father: learns to notice subtle things from mother à enhances Child-rearing and marital interaction.

Gender Attributions

• Manager-helper couples: Legitimated their divisions of labor & reaffirmed the “naturalness” of essential gender differences.

• Equal sharing couples: Gender similarities hypothesisà some women nurture better than others; some men nurture better than other men

Gender Attributions • Parents most successful in child care were

most likely to claim that men could nurture like women.

• (i) Those who believed that men could nurture like women attempted to share all aspects of child care

• (ii) Successful sharing of child care reinforced beliefs that men could nurture like women.

Normalizing Atypical Behavior

• Father received more credit for family involvement than mother b/c it was expected that she would perform child care and housework.

• Father labeled as fantastic, wonderful, incredible.

• Father: praised for performing task that would go unnoticed if mother performed it

Normalizing Atypical Behavior

• Fathers: Discouraged from talking about family and children at work

• Co-workers disappointed that repeatedly turned down invitations to go out w/ boys

• Co-workers perceived them as not serious about their work.

• As a result, fathers hid extent of family involvement.

• What are the macro-level and micro-level functions of these societal sanctions discouraging men to be involved with family and children?