Infant care and wives' depressive symptoms

Although some investigators show that division of child care between spouses is related to the psychological well-being of wives, little attention has been given to the relevance of specific dimensions of child care or to nonemployed as well as employed wives. In this study we differentiate basic child care tasks, i.e., those that are essential for the family's physical well-being from other, more supplemental, or auxiliary tasks. We hypothesize that husbands' failure to perform auxiliary child care will be distressing for wives, regardless of employment status because it contributes to perceptions of marital inequity. On the other hand, husbands' lack of participation in the more time-consuming, basic, tasks will be most distressing for employed wives because it results in an increased overall work load. We also hypothesize that when employed mothers are responsible for arranging child care, and when such care entails financial strains, they are more likely to experience psychological distress. To evaluate these hypotheses we use data drawn from a mail survey of a sample of mothers of infants. Using multiple regression analysis, we find that husbands' involvement in child care and housework, especially in the time-consuming tasks, is relatively low and that the most consistent predictor of husbands' involvement is wives' relative income. In terms of the impact of husbands' involvement on wives' well-being, lower levels of husbands' participation in auxiliary, but not basic, child care are associated with increases in reported symptoms, regardless of wives' employment status. When child care is relatively more costly, employed wives report increased symptoms of depression. We discuss these results in terms of the role played by expectations of husbands and wives about parental responsibility for child care.