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

Judith Treas1, Tsui-O Tai

  • 1Department of Sociology, SSPA 3151, School of Social Sciences, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697-5100, USA.

Social Science Research
|September 29, 2012
PubMed

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.

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