Tethered lives: A couple-based perspective on the consequences of parenthood for time use,occupation, and wages

Prior research on parenthood effects has typically used single-sex models and estimated average effects. By contrast, we estimate population-level variability in partners' changes in housework hours, paid work hours, occupation traits, and wages after becoming parents, and we explore whether one partner's adjustment offsets or supplements the other's. We find tradeoffs between spouses on paid work adjustments to parenthood, but complementarity in adjustments to housework hours, occupation traits, and wages. The effect of parenthood on wives' behaviors is larger and more variable than on husbands' behaviors in every domain. The modest variation between husbands in work responses to parenthood explains little of the variation in the motherhood penalty, while variation in wives' own behaviors plays a larger role. We refer to this pattern as tethered autonomy: variation across American couples in work responses to parenthood is shaped primarily by variation in wives' adjustments, while husbands' work acts largely as a fixed point.     

Ethnicity,inequality, and perceived electoral fairness

Establishing electoral legitimacy across the population is vital for democratic stability, yet in contrast to other measures of political support, perceived electoral fairness has received scant scholarly attention. Moreover, while research into other measures of political support has shown that they differ by both ethnicity and socio-economic status, no study examines both at once, potentially overlooking important interrelationships between the two variables. This paper combines data from the Ethnic Power Relations project and the World Value Survey to examine respondents’ perceptions of electoral fairness according to their ethnic group’s access to power, their individual socio-economic status, and the intersection of these two. It finds that one’s ethnic group’s political status does affect perceived fairness, but that the effect interacts strongly with one’s socio-economic status. Poorer members of non-represented ethnic groups have significantly lower perceptions of fairness, while richer members’ perceptions do not differ from those of represented groups. The results suggest a levelling effect of socio-economic status on ethnic inequalities.     

Gender and class housework inequalities in the era of outsourcing hiring domestic work in Spain

Many households regularly outsource unpaid domestic labor by purchasing services and products to help with cleaning, cooking, ironing, and other chores. Despite the prevalence of this practice, scholars know little about how it affects inequalities in the time spent on housework. Drawing on data on 3540 dual-earner households in Spain, this article examines the relationship between hiring domestic work and both the within-household gender gap in housework and the class gap in housework among women. I find that women who hire do about 30 min less housework per day than non-hiring women, but in relation to their partners these women continue to do the same share of housework. Using counterfactual analysis, I find that the absence of paid domestic work is associated with a 20% decline in the class gap in housework among Spanish women.     

Her money, her time: Women’s earnings and their housework hours

Do husbands and wives divide housework on the basis of who makes more money? Much of the recent literature has focused on the effects of individuals’ earnings relative to their partners’ on their housework. By contrast, this paper analyzes the effects of women’s own earnings on the time they spend doing housework in the context of heterosexual couple households. A conservative estimate using the second wave of the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH) is that the negative association of women’s housework with their own earnings is two to three times greater than that with their partners’; in the full model, the association with partners’ earnings is not statistically significant. The importance of women’s own earnings in housework models is highlighted by the comparable effect of income on housework among single women. It appears that so far as housework is concerned, women do not benefit greatly from their male partners’ incomes. The finding emphasizes the gender segregation of domestic labor, and underscores the importance of income differences among women in explaining their housework behavior. It shows that the difference between the mean housework hours of the women with the lowest and highest earnings is as large as the difference between the mean housework hours of women and men.     

Reciprocal relationships between attitudes about gender and social contexts during young adulthood

Using data from a 31-year panel study, we investigate reciprocal relationships between individuals’ attitudes about gender and their experience with a range of social settings commonly associated with the transition to adulthood. These settings include school, the labor market, independent living arrangements, cohabitation, marriage, and parenthood. We consider the extent to which gender and age moderate the relationships between attitudes about gender and exposure to these social contexts. Ordinary least squares regression and hazard models demonstrate that support for egalitarian roles for women and men in families is positively linked to subsequent school enrollment, women’s full-time employment, and independent living, but negatively associated with the subsequent timing of entry into marriage and marital parenthood. Accumulated schooling, independent living, and full-time employment are associated with changes in individuals’ attitudes about gender. Despite careful attention to gender differences, we find surprisingly little evidence that the causes and consequences of attitudes about gender differ for women and men, with the primary exception being the positive association of employment and egalitarian gender attitudes for women but not for men.     

The state of domestic affairs: Housework,gender and state-level institutional logics

Multi-level cross-national research consistently shows individual housework arrangements are structured by broader contexts of equality. Across this body of research, the United States is treated as a single entity. Yet, individual-level housework time may vary by state-to-state differences in institutional market, family and legislative logics. To test these relationships, we pair individual-level data from the American Time Use Survey (2003–2012; aged 18 to 64 n = 106,190) with three state-level indices – female labor force empowerment, family traditionalism and state government liberalism. For market institutional logics, we find wives and husbands spend more but mothers less time in housework in states where women have more labor market power. For family logics, we find mothers spend more and husbands less time in housework in more traditional states. For legislative logics, we find women and husbands spend more time in housework in more liberal states. Our results highlight the importance of state-to-state institutional logics on individuals' housework time.     

Housework: Cause and consequence of gender ideology?

Nearly all quantitative studies examining the association between the division of housework and gender ideology have found that gender egalitarianism results in less housework for wives, more for husbands, and more equal sharing of housework by couples. However, a few studies suggest housework has a nontrivial influence on gender ideology. An overreliance on single-direction, single-equation regression models and cross-sectional data has limited past research from making strong claims about the causal relationship between gender ideology and housework. We use data on married couples from Waves 1 and 2 of the National Survey of Families and Households and nonrecursive simultaneous equation models to assess the causal relationship between housework and gender ideology. Results show a mutual and reciprocal relationship between the division of housework and gender ideology for both husbands’ and wives’. Reciprocity is strongest for husbands while for wives the relationship is partially indirect and mediated through their husbands’ gender ideologies.     

Income inequality,distributive fairness and political trust in Latin America

In the wake of rising levels of income inequality during the past two decades, widespread concerns emerged about the social and political consequences of the widening gap between the poor and the rich that can be observed in many established democracies. Several empirical studies substantiate the link between macro-level income inequality and political attitudes and behavior, pointing at its broad and negative implications for political equality. Accordingly, these implications are expected to be accentuated in contexts of high inequality, as is the case in Latin America. Despite these general concerns about the consequences of income inequality, few studies have accounted for the importance of individual perceptions of distributive fairness in regard to trust in political institutions. Even less is known about the extent to which distributive fairness perceptions co-vary with objective indicators of inequality. Moreover, the research in this area has traditionally focused on OECD countries, which have lower indexes of inequality than the rest of the world. This study aims at filling this gap by focusing on the relevance of distributive fairness perceptions and macro-level inequality for political trust and on how these two levels interact in Latin American countries. The analyses are based on the Latinobarometer survey 2011, which consists of 18 countries. Multilevel estimations suggest that both dimensions of inequality are negatively associated with political trust but that higher levels of macro-level inequality attenuate rather than increase the strength of the negative association between distributive fairness perceptions and political trust.     

Housework share between partners: Experimental evidence on gender-specific preferences

This paper uses a novel vignette-based experimental design to investigate the reasons underlying the gendered division of housework. We are particularly interested in the role of gender-specific preferences: are there differences in the utility that men and women derive from housework, and might these be responsible for the fact that women continue to do more housework than men? It is difficult to address these questions with conventional survey data, because of inherent problems with endogeneity and ex-post rationalization; our experimental design circumvents these problems. We find remarkably little evidence of any systematic gender differences in preferences, and a general inclination towards an equal distribution of housework; this suggests that the reasons for the gendered division of housework do not derive from gender differences in preferences, and must lie elsewhere.     

Educational assortative mating and time use in the home

This study examines the association between individuals' educational assortative mating and time spent on child care and housework. Focus is put on hypogamous couples, or couples in which wives have more education than their husbands. Relative resources and gender revolution frameworks are considered as contexts to explain why hypogamous couples may share their time differently than other couples. A series of ordinary least squares regressions with population and sampling weights are employed using American Time Use Survey data from 2003 to 2018. Three, separate analyses using relative education, gender, and all educational pairings as the independent variables of interest are presented with child care and housework as the dependent variables. The current findings show that men in hypogamous marriages perform about 10 min more of child care per day on average than their peers in hypergamous and homogamous marriages, and that this comes primarily from basic care activities. This accounts for approximately 43% of the difference between men and women in the average amount of time spent on child care. No clear pattern of significance is apparent comparing individuals’ time spent on housework by relative education, suggesting that housework and child care have evolved differently in the context of gendered domestic responsibilities. Men in hypogamous marriages are more egalitarian in their sharing of child care. However, this is only true for couples in which men have at least a high school diploma and women are highly educated.     

Single-parent households and children’s educational achievement: A state-level analysis

Although many studies have examined associations between family structure and children’s educational achievement at the individual level, few studies have considered how the increase in single-parent households may have affected children’s educational achievement at the population level. We examined changes in the percentage of children living with single parents between 1990 and 2011 and state mathematics and reading scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Regression models with state and year fixed effects revealed that changes in the percentage of children living with single parents were not associated with test scores. Increases in maternal education, however, were associated with improvements in children’s test scores during this period. These results do not support the notion that increases in single parenthood have had serious consequences for U.S. children’s school achievement.     

“80后”女性就业质量调查报告

调查数据表明,"80后"女性总体就业率较高,但也存在一些非自愿性失业。从事职业较为广泛,多集中于第三产业,职位级别有七成以上为普通职员,工作收入总体偏低,工作压力普遍较大。因户籍、职业、受教育程度、职位级别不同,工作压力有所差异,所感知的压力源不尽相同。工作满意度普遍较高,职业、受教育程度、职级对满意度有所影响。阻碍女性晋升的因素中,传统观念和家庭影响显著。提高"80后"女性的就业质量,女性自身需学会对家庭与工作进行权衡把握,需提高缓解压力的能力,另外应倡导用人单位进行人本化管理,并积极推进家务劳动社会化。     

Variable links within perceived police legitimacy?: Fairness and effectiveness across races and places

This work examines connections between two threads of community residents’ perceptions of local police legitimacy, effectiveness and procedural fairness, and how those links depend on race, place, and race/place combinations. Previous works have connected these two threads, but have failed (a) to explore the variability of that connection by race, place, and race/place combinations across communities spanning the urban to suburban to rural continuum or (b) to model mutual influence. An extension of the group position thesis and work on minority views of police practices suggest how these variations might be patterned. Data were derived from a 2003 probability-based sampling survey of household respondents across Pennsylvania (n = 1289). Generalized confirmatory factor analysis models built procedural fairness and effectiveness indices for four groups: whites in urban core counties, non-whites in urban core counties, whites in non-urban core counties, and non-whites in non-urban core counties. Non-recursive structural equation models revealed variable impacts of perceived police effectiveness on perceived police fairness and, to a lesser extent, of fairness on effectiveness. Implications for a more structurally and contextually aware understanding of links in police legitimacy models are developed.     

Gatekeepers of the American Dream: How teachers’ perceptions shape the academic outcomes of immigrant and language-minority students

High school teachers evaluate and offer guidance to students as they approach the transition to college based in part on their perceptions of the student's hard work and potential to succeed in college. Their perceptions may be especially crucial for immigrant and language-minority students navigating the U.S. educational system. Using the Educational Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS:2002), we consider how the intersection of nativity and language-minority status may (1) inform teachers’ perceptions of students’ effort and college potential, and (2) shape the link between teachers’ perceptions and students’ academic progress towards college (grades and likelihood of advancing to more demanding math courses). We find that teachers perceive immigrant language-minority students as hard workers, and that their grades reflect that perception. However, these same students are less likely than others to advance in math between the sophomore and junior years, a critical point for preparing for college. Language-minority students born in the U.S. are more likely to be negatively perceived. Yet, when their teachers see them as hard workers, they advance in math at the same rates as nonimmigrant native English speaking peers. Our results demonstrate the importance of considering both language-minority and immigrant status as social dimensions of students’ background that moderate the way that high school teachers’ perceptions shape students’ preparation for college.     

Apron strings of working mothers: Maternal employment and housework in cross-national perspective

This paper asks whether maternal employment has a lasting influence on the division of household labor for married women and men. Employing multi-level models with 2002 ISSP survey data for 31 countries, we test the lagged accommodation hypothesis that a long societal history of maternal employment contributes to more egalitarian household arrangements. Our results find that living in a country with a legacy of high maternal employment is positively associated with housework task-sharing, even controlling for the personal socialization experience of growing up with a mother who worked for pay. In formerly socialist countries, however, there is less gender parity in housework than predicted by the high historical level of maternal employment.     

Labor market influences on Women's fertility decisions: Longitudinal evidence from Canada

While fertility theories suggest that insecure labor market experiences encourage women to postpone having children, few have examined whether job insecurity perceptions influence fertility in the North American context—an omission we address in the current study. Findings from event history analyses of a panel dataset of Canadian workers (Canadian Work, Stress and Health Study) reveal that perceived job insecurity is salient for women's first birth decisions but not subsequent births. Further subgroup analyses show that the association between perceived job insecurity and likelihood of a first birth is limited to college-educated women and those in low unemployment labor market regions. Among women with less than a college degree and those in high-unemployment regions, the likelihood of a first birth does not vary by respondents' perceptions of insecurity. Results suggest a more nuanced relationship between insecure work and women's childbearing decisions than predicted by traditional pro-cyclical accounts of the economy-fertility association.     

Trajectories of marijuana use and the transition to adulthood

Alongside the rise of emerging adulthood, policy contexts for marijuana have rapidly changed, with increases in availability and the number of daily users. We identify heterogeneous pathways of marijuana use from age 16 to 26, and examine how these pathways differentiate adult role transitions by age 28. Latent class analyses identified five trajectories: abstainers, dabblers, consistent users, early heavy quitters, and persistent heavy users. Dabblers are no different from abstainers on educational and labor market outcomes, and both have higher odds of adult role transitions relative to heavier use classes. Dabblers differ from abstainers on certain family transitions, yet remain distinct from the heavier use classes. Besides parenthood, early heavy quitters and persistent heavy users are similar, suggesting that heavy use is particularly detrimental early during transitions to adulthood. Distinct trajectories of marijuana use may differentiate young people into divergent pathways of transitions to adulthood, which may have long-term implications.     

Intelligence and childlessness

Demographers debate why people have children in advanced industrial societies where children are net economic costs. From an evolutionary perspective, however, the important question is why some individuals choose not to have children. Recent theoretical developments in evolutionary psychology suggest that more intelligent individuals may be more likely to prefer to remain childless than less intelligent individuals. Analyses of the National Child Development Study show that more intelligent men and women express preference to remain childless early in their reproductive careers, but only more intelligent women (not more intelligent men) are more likely to remain childless by the end of their reproductive careers. Controlling for education and earnings does not at all attenuate the association between childhood general intelligence and lifetime childlessness among women. One-standard-deviation increase in childhood general intelligence (15 IQ points) decreases women’s odds of parenthood by 21–25%. Because women have a greater impact on the average intelligence of future generations, the dysgenic fertility among women is predicted to lead to a decline in the average intelligence of the population in advanced industrial nations.     

Housework, market work, and “doing gender” when marital satisfaction declines

When faced with a decline in marital satisfaction, are wives constrained from increasing their labor market work time in part because they “do gender?” One of the predictions of the human capital accumulation hypothesis, which assumes no constraints, is that housewives with little work experience will respond to a decline in marital satisfaction by increasing labor market work time (only). In contrast, the gender display hypothesis predicts that, in settings where the evaluations of marriage and wives’ work performance are closely intertwined, a decline in marital satisfaction among this group of housewives will increase both labor market work and housework—and the increase in housework serves as a constraint on the increase in labor market work. To evaluate these contrasting hypotheses, we analyze a panel survey of women in contemporary Japan. Results from multinomial logit regression models are more consistent with the gender display hypothesis than the human capital accumulation hypothesis. Housewives with relatively little work experience are 11 times more likely to increase the time spent on both labor market work and housework when the satisfaction of their marriage declines than when it does not. No evidence is found that, when marital satisfaction declines, these housewives are statistically significantly more likely to increase labor market work only.     

Impact of the spread of mass education on married women’s experience with domestic violence

This paper investigates the association between mass education and married women’s experience with domestic violence in rural Nepal. Previous research on domestic violence in South Asian societies emphasizes patriarchal ideology and the widespread subordinate status of women within their communities and families. The recent spread of mass education is likely to shift these gendered dynamics, thereby lowering women’s likelihood of experiencing domestic violence. Using data from 1775 currently married women from the Chitwan Valley Family Study in Nepal, we provide a thorough analysis of how the spread of mass education is associated with domestic violence among married women. The results show that women’s childhood access to school, their parents’ schooling, their own schooling, and their husbands’ schooling are each associated with their lower likelihood of experiencing domestic violence. Indeed, husbands’ education has a particularly strong, inverse association with women’s likelihood of experiencing domestic violence. These associations suggest that the proliferation of mass education will lead to a marked decline in women’s experience with domestic violence in Nepal.