Male Adolescents' Contributions to Household Labor As Predictors of Later-Life Participation in Housework

Summary

---

According to [Lipman-Blumen] (1984), latent socialization occurs when individuals are indirectly socialized into atypical sex roles. Children growing up in nuclear family settings have the opportunity to study, learn, and "try on" the roles and, by extension, the household tasks associated with the opposite gender. Through observation and experimentation with masculine and feminine behavior, she notes children "indirectly and implicitly" learn the gender roles and behavior of the "other" sex. Girls are often granted greater leniency in enacting masculine roles, at least until they approach adolescence (Lipman-Blumen, 1984), since gender differences in socialization tends to increase with age (Block, 1984). Moreover, this socialization is maximized during the high school years (Block, 1984; Gager, Cooney, & Call, 1999). Barring a crisis, individuals (particularly males) are rarely encouraged to take on the role of the gendered "other" and to engage in stereotypical, sex-typed activities. Still, the knowledge of and the capacity to perform the "role tasks" of the "other," which stem from the process of latent socialization, may be preserved until certain situations arise (Lipman-Blumen, 1984).

Domestic division of labor in adulthood was assessed using the following self-completion items: "Who mostly prepares/cooks the main meals?", "Who mostly does the cleaning?", and "Who mostly does laundry and ironing?" The possible response categories were as follows: "I do most of it," "My partner does most of it," "We share more or less equally," "Someone else does it," and "Does not apply." A dichotomous variable was constructed to indicate whether or not a man reported having primary responsibility for a task, and another dichotomous variable was created if the man indicated that he and his partner shared the tasks equally.

Does this sharing of female-typed tasks affect the perception that the division of housework is fair? Fairness evaluations show that men's lower contributions to the more routinized tasks (i.e., cooking, cleaning, and washing) is often associated with a greater sense of unfairness by both sexes ([Coltrane], 2000). Thus, sharing doesn't necessarily entail an "equitable" or "fair" division of labor. Some studies report a fair division being one in which men perform approximately one-third of the total labor (Lennon & Rosenfeld, 1994). So, while our findings suggest that there may be some movement toward redistribution, the division of labor may still be far from equitable and fair in the sense that housework is divided and performed "50-50." In fact, couples rarely use this breakdown as an "equity point" (Lennon & Rosenfeld, 1994) because inequity -- as measured by the BCS70 questionnaire response category, "We share more or less equally," with less being the operative word -- has been normalized (Coltrane, 2000).

See the full content of this document

Extract

---

Male Adolescents' Contributions to Household Labor As Predictors of Later-Life Participation in Housework

This article examines childhood influences on adult males' behavior in the domestic sphere. Informed by social learning theory and the concept of latent socialization, we test whether adolescent participation in housework-related activities resulted in a continued contribution to household labor in later-life adult partnerships. This study uses time-use data collected from a cohort of British births at age 16, as well as data collected from the cohort members 13 years later (age 29). Our findings suggest a positive relationship between spending time on household chores in youth and the likelihood of men becoming primarily responsible for a number of routine household tasks. Our analyses fail to demonstrate that adolescents' task performance facilitated equitable task sharing between adult partners. However, we find support for our hypothesis that adult men's attitudes and participation in housework is latently shaped across the life course.

Keywords: men's behavior, teenage boys, domestic sphere, housework, adolescence, latent socialization

In this study, we examine childhood influences on adult men's behavior in the domestic sphere. Despite popular attention to the inequitable division of labor within the household, a disproportionate amount of a household's routine domestic labor continues to be done by women (Coltrane, 2000). This gendered division of household labor reproduces unequal social relations between women and men both in and outside the home (e.g., Armstrong, 1997; Fox, 1980; Hartmann, 1981; Luxton, 1980). Clearly, however, there are men who contribute to domestic labor more than their "average" male counterparts. What are the characteristics of these men that make them different ...

See the full content of this document

---