| The division of family labor (housework and child care) among dual-career parents, and its relationship to marital satisfaction, was examined in this study. Thirty middle-income couples in which both spouses were employed full-time and parenting one or more young children were interviewed. The Locke-Wallace Short Marital Adjustment Test (1959), a family labor division instrument (adapted from Cowan and Cowan, 1979), and a researcher-designed questionnaire were administered separately to spouses in their home. Each subject's involvement in 23 housework and 38 child-care tasks, proportional to their spouse, measured the degree to which family labor was equitably shared per couple. Spouses' satisfaction with their current task division, and self-perceived competency in the performance of family labor tasks, was also assessed.;Using multiple regression analysis, findings revealed that husbands who perceive their child-care division to be more egalitarian, and who feel more satisfied with this division, are significantly more satisfied with their marriages. While the findings for wives fell just short of statistical significance, there was a clear trend for wives who perceive their child-care division to be more egalitarian to experience higher marital satisfaction as well. No significant relationships between housework division and marital satisfaction were found.;When compared to previous research citing the disproportionate share of housework and child care dual-career wives generally perform, the present findings suggest a shift in the direction of greater equity in the family labor role. Although wives did perform more family labor than the husbands, the differences were relatively small. However, while it appears that husbands are performing more tasks, especially in the child-care domain, the majority of wives complained that they still continue to assume more "executive" responsibility for initiating and organizing family labor. Both wives and husbands perceived themselves to be very competent in the performance of family labor. In the child-care domain alone, a positive correlation between husbands' competency and degree of involvement was found. It is suggested that as men become more practiced and competent in the family labor role, their level of participation and responsibility will increase, resulting in greater marital satisfaction for both spouses. |
