husbands' and wives' time spent on housework. a comparison of measures - lee y waite (2005)

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Husbands' and Wives' Time Spent on Housework: A Comparison of Measures Author(s): Yun-Suk Lee and Linda J. Waite Source: Journal of Marriage and Family, Vol. 67, No. 2 (May, 2005), pp. 328-336 Published by: National Council on Family Relations Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3600272 . Accessed: 12/09/2013 15:20 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . National Council on Family Relations is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of Marriage and Family. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 201.213.38.62 on Thu, 12 Sep 2013 15:20:44 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

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  • Husbands' and Wives' Time Spent on Housework: A Comparison of MeasuresAuthor(s): Yun-Suk Lee and Linda J. WaiteSource: Journal of Marriage and Family, Vol. 67, No. 2 (May, 2005), pp. 328-336Published by: National Council on Family RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3600272 .Accessed: 12/09/2013 15:20

    Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

    .JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

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    National Council on Family Relations is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access toJournal of Marriage and Family.

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  • YUN-SUK LEE University of Seoul

    LINDA J. WAITE University of Chicago*

    Husbands' and Wives' Time Spent on Housework:

    A Comparison of Measures

    This study compares a series of estimates of the time spent on houseworkfrom survey responses and time-use estimates from the Experience Sampling Method (ESM) obtained from hus- bands and wives in the Sloan 500 Family Study. These include estimates from husband's and wife's answers to questions about own time and spouse's time on household tasks, and time-use estimates from the ESM. The three ESM esti- mates include primary activity only, primary plus secondary activity, and primary and sec- ondary activity plus time spent thinking about household tasks. We find that estimates of hours spent on housework differ substantially and sig- nificantly across various measures, as does the absolute size of the gap between hours spent by husbands and wives. Share of housework done by husbands differs somewhat less.

    Wives spend substantially more time than their husbands on family work, even though women do less and men do slightly more now than 20 years ago (Bianchi, Milkie, Sayer, & Robinson, 2000). Researchers from a wide range of disci- plines have attempted to isolate the causes and

    Department of Urban Sociology, University of Seoul, 90 Jeonnong-dong, Dongdaemun-gu, Seoul, Korea 130-743.

    *Alfred P. Sloan Center on Parents, Children, and Work, University of Chicago, 1155 E 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637 ([email protected]).

    Key Words: gender gap, housework, time use.

    consequences of this division of household labor for men and women and for family func- tioning (Coltrane, 2000; Shelton & John, 1996) but have used different measures and methods. This raises multiple problems for investigators, especially when comparing their results to other studies (Shelton & John).

    Most researchers define household labor as unpaid work that contributes to the well-being of family members and the maintenance of their home (Shelton & John, 1996). Most research focuses on the more restricted category of housework, which consists of physical activities such as cleaning, laundry, and cooking. Few studies include the other components of house- hold labor-child care, emotional labor such as providing encouragement or advice, and men- tal labor such as planning or household man- agement (Coltrane, 2000), although these are clearly important.

    To estimate the amount of time spent on housework, most previous studies use either survey questions or time diaries (Coltrane, 2000; Shelton & John, 1996). In surveys, re- spondents are asked to estimate the number of hours they or their spouses spend on housework or on selected household tasks. In time diary studies, participants are asked to report all their activities, usually for the previous day (Robin- son & Godbey, 1997). Time on housework activities is then added up across the day for each respondent. Previous attempts to compare measures of time spent on housework obtained from time diary studies with survey reports

    Journal of Marriage and Family 67 (May 2005): 328-336 328

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  • Measuring Time on Housework

    (e.g., Marini & Shelton, 1993) have been ham- pered by the absence of both types of estimates in a single study. Because both the samples and approaches differ in these comparisons, the con- tribution that each makes to discrepancies in es- timates of time spent on housework cannot be distinguished.

    In addition, both surveys and time diaries generally obtain information from a single member of a married couple. As a result, com- parisons of time spent by husbands and wives rely on reports by one respondent on the time spent by self and spouse or on information from male respondents versus information from female respondents. One important exception, the National Survey of Families and House- holds, asked both members of married couples similar questions on time spent on housework but has no time-use data with which to compare the answers.

    Scholars have developed a number of mea- sures of the division of housework, and each has strengths and weaknesses. One commonly used measure is the share of housework done by the husband (Presser, 1994). This has the advantage of providing a simple and direct summary mea- sure but may change over time or differ across couples because of changes in the husband's time, changes in the wife's time, or both. Bianchi et al. (2000) suggest using instead the difference between the hours spent by the wife and the hours spent by the husband. The two measures sometimes tell different stories about the division of housework, as we see later.

    This study addresses some of these limitations of previous research. It compares various esti- mates of the time spent on housework by hus- bands and wives, using data from couples in the Sloan 500 Family Study. Estimates of hours spent on housework by self and spouse are calcu- lated from responses to survey questions asked of both husbands and wives married to each other. Survey estimates are then compared to estimates for the same respondents from the Experience Sampling Method (ESM), which produces a ran- dom sample of daily activities measured over a 1-week period, also obtained from each spouse.

    This study contributes to the debate about the gender gap in housework through a detailed and careful comparison of key measures of house- work time for the same respondents. This article addresses five key questions about the measures and methods used for studying time spent on household chores by husbands and wives and the

    gender gap in housework. First, do estimates depend on which spouse is asked? Second, does the data collection method affect the estimates obtained? Third, do estimates depend on how one treats secondary activities-two activities done simultaneously? Fourth, are estimates sensi- tive to the inclusion of mental labor, such as household management, planning, and organiza- tion? Fifth, do conclusions about the gender gap in household labor depend on whether one mea- sures the gap as the difference in the number of hours of housework done by the husband and the number of hours done by the wife or as the per- centage of household labor done by the husband?

    METHOD

    Data

    The data used here are drawn from a sample of married couples with children aged 5-18 years participating in the Sloan 500 Family Study, which was carried out in 1999 and 2000. The Sloan Study obtained information from three family members-mother, father, and child-in each family using multiple methods-in-depth interviews, questionnaires, and the ESM (de- scribed in detail below). Most are non-Hispanic Whites, in their mid-40s. The families in this sample are economically advantaged compared to married parents in the United States as a whole, with high levels of education completed. (See Hoogstra, 2005, for a detailed description of the study.) This paper examines information from the 265 married-couple families in which both the husband and wife completed the survey and the ESM, who are somewhat more highly educated than the sample as a whole, with wives somewhat more likely to be employed.

    Experience Sampling Method

    The Sloan 500 Family Study collected data from both spouses using the ESM (Csikszent- mihalyi, 1997), often described as a diary-like method (Coltrane, 2000). The ESM is a unique time study process of data collection in which respondents are given specially programmed wristwatches to wear for 1 week, during which time the watches "beep" during waking hours at a random time within each 2-hour block, pro- ducing eight signals a day with no two signals being less than 30 minutes apart. When beeped,

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  • Journal of Marriage and Family

    ESM respondents are asked to report their pri- mary activity ("What was the main thing you were doing?") and their secondary activity, if any ("What else were you doing at the same time?"). ESM participants are asked to report what they are thinking about when signaled ("What was on your mind?"). The literature examining the quality of the ESM data con- cludes that, in general, ESM data are reliable and valid when compared with data obtained from other instruments (Csikszentmihalyi & Larson, 1987). Responses to the ESM can be used to estimate time spent by respondents dur- ing the sampled week on a wide range of activi- ties, including time spent on housework.

    Measures

    Household tasks. Most researchers agree that major household tasks include (a) cooking, (b) cleaning, (c) shopping for groceries and house- hold goods, (d) doing dishes, and (e) laundry (Coltrane, 2000, p. 1210). These tasks are included in our estimates of time spent on house- work. According to Coltrane, this routine house- work consists of tasks that are the most time consuming and most frequently done, with little flexibility in scheduling. There is an additional set of tasks that researchers may or may not include in their definition of household labor: driving, financial paperwork, yard maintenance, and re- pairing tasks. Coltrane calls these occasional or other household tasks. We include all these tasks except driving, which we exclude because of idi- osyncratic features of the Sloan data. Thus, our measure of housework includes time spent wash- ing dishes, cleaning the house, doing laundry, cooking, shopping for the household, family paperwork, and yard and home maintenance.

    Survey measures of own time and spouse's time spent on housework. In the survey, respondents were asked, for each task, "How many hours per week do you personally spend on the fol- lowing tasks?" They were also asked, "How many hours per week does your spouse spend on the following tasks?" The tasks and response categories were identical on these two ques- tions. Response categories included 0 hours, 1-2 hours, 3-5 hours, 6-10 hours, 11-15 hours, 16-20 hours, and 21 + hours. Each per- son provided estimates of hours spent on each task for self and, separately, for spouse.

    To estimate the number of hours spent on housework from the response categories above, we assigned the value of the midpoint of the response category for each task. For the open- ended category, we assigned the value 21 hours because very few respondents report spending more than that number of hours on a single task. We calculate the number of hours each individ- ual reported spending on housework per week by summing the hours for the seven tasks in Table 1. We create a measure of the individual's estimate of own time spent on housework, and another measure of the individual's estimate of spouse's time spent on housework.

    ESM time-use measures of own time on house- work activities. In the ESM, signals occur at random, providing a representative sample of time use by each respondent. Participants are typically signaled eight times during their wak- ing hours each day for 7 consecutive days, re- sulting in a total of 56 signals per week. The time spent on household labor is measured by the ratio of the number of beeps for which the respondent reports doing household tasks to the total number of beeps the individual responds to multiplied by the number of waking hours per week. The most restrictive and conservative measure of time spent on housework is based only on beeps for which respondents indicate that housework was the primary activity. A more liberal measure of time spent on house- work includes beeps at which respondents re- port doing housework either as a primary or as a secondary activity. This more liberal (or latter) measure adds 2 hours to housework time for each hour spent doing the laundry while cook- ing dinner, for example, one for laundry and one for cooking. Clearly, this measure provides an upper-bound estimate of housework time.

    The ESM data also provide a measure for how often respondents think about the eight household tasks included in our measure, which allows for the calculation of time spent on the mental labor of housework, excluding the times during which respondents were doing house- hold tasks. All estimates are weighted to correct for differential response rates (Jeong, 2005).

    RESULTS

    Table 1 presents estimates based on responses to survey questions about self and spouse and estimates based on responses to the ESM.

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  • Measuring Time on Housework

    TABLE 1. ESTIMATES OF NUMBER OF HOURS SPENT ON HOUSEWORK PER WEEK: SURVEY AND THE ESM (N = 256)

    Survey

    Husbands Wives The ESM

    Reported by Husbands Wives

    Mental Mental Self Spouse Self Spouse Primary Secondary Labor Primary Secondary Labor

    Washing the dishes 2.9a 2.0 3.4a 3.1 0.9b 0.1 0.0 1.2b 0.5 0.0

    Cleaning the house 2.4a 1.3 4.4 4.1 1.8b 0.8 0.3 3.3b 1.7 0.4

    Laundry 1.6a 1.1 4.3 4.2 0.7b 0.4 0.1 1.4b 1.1 0.2

    Cooking 3.0a 2.0 6.3a 5.9 2.9 0.8 0.3 5.2b 1.7 0.9

    Shopping for household 1.9a 1.5 3.1a 3.4 0.5b 0.0 0.2 0.9b 0.2 0.4

    Family paperwork 2.3a 2.1 2.2a 2.5 0.9b 0.3 0.7 0.8b 0.3 0.5

    Yard and home maintenance 3.6a 2.8 2.4a 1.9 2.3b 0.6 0.8 2.2 0.8 0.7 Total 17.7a,b,c,d 12.8e 26.0b,c,d 24.9e,f 10.0b 3.0 2.3 15.0b 6.3 3.1

    Note: Subscript a indicates significant difference between self-report and spouse's report at p < .05; b, significant difference between self-report and ESM primary at p < .05; c, significant difference between self-report and ESM primary + secondary at p < .05; d, significant difference between self-report and ESM primary + secondary + mental at p < .05; e, significant dif- ference between spouse's report and ESM primary at p < .05; f, significant difference between spouse's report and ESM

    primary + secondary at p < .05; g, significant difference between spouse's report and ESM primary + secondary + mental at

    p < .05. ESM = Experience Sampling Method.

    Table 2 compares the various estimates and presents the gap in the number of hours spent by husband and wife and the husband's share of housework implied by each.

    Table 1 shows the mean number of hours that husbands (Column 1) and wives (Column 3) re- ported in response to survey questions that they spent on various housework tasks per week. Table 1 also shows the mean number of hours that each reported that their spouse spent on each task per week (Columns 2 and 4). This

    table indicates that husbands and wives agree that wives spend more time on household labor than husbands do. Husbands estimate that their wives spend, on average, 24.9 hours per week on housework (Column 4). Wives estimate that they spend 26 hours on the sum of these tasks (Column 3). Note that these estimates do not differ significantly.

    Table 1 also shows that although spouses agree on the approximate amount of time that wives spend on housework, they differ

    TABLE 2. ESTIMATES OF NUMBER OF HOURS SPENT ON HOUSEWORK PER WEEK, DIFFERENCE IN HOURS BETWEEN HUSBAND AND WIFE, AND PROPORTION DONE BY HUSBAND: SURVEY AND THE ESM (N = 265)

    Proportion Done Wives Husbands Difference by Husband (%)

    Survey Wives' report on self and 26.0 12.8 13.2** 33

    spouse Husbands' report on self and 24.9 17.7 7.2** 42

    spouse The ESM

    Primary 15.0 10.0 5.0** 40

    Primary + secondary 21.3 13.0 8.3** 38

    Primary + secondary + 24.4 15.3 9.1** 39

    mental labor

    *p < .05. **p < .01.

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  • Journal of Marriage and Family

    significantly and much more on the amount of time husbands spend (Column 1 vs. Column 2). On average, husbands report that they spend about 18 hours per week on household chores, but wives estimate that their husbands spend only 13 hours per week on domestic tasks, a sta- tistically significant difference. Previous studies suggest that this 5-hour discrepancy may come from husbands' overestimation of their time on household labor (Press & Townsley, 1998). A comparison of survey and ESM estimates al- lows us to test this reasoning.

    Table 1 also provides ESM estimates of the time that husbands and wives in the sample devote to household labor, separately for each task and for the total of all tasks. Column 5 gives estimates of time spent on housework as a primary activity by husbands, given in Column 8 for wives. Columns 6 and 9 present estimates of time spent on housework while doing something else as a primary activity. Col- umns 7 and 10 present time spent thinking about household tasks.

    ESM measures of time spent on housework that include only the primary activity show that husbands and wives spend about 10 and 15 hours, respectively, on household labor per week. The estimate for married men is similar to that from time diary studies that count only the primary activity (Bianchi et al., 2000). The estimate for married women, however, is signif- icantly lower than time diary estimates based only on the primary activity (Bianchi et al.). We discuss possible reasons for this difference in a later section of the paper.

    The ESM data in Table 1 show that, in this sample, husbands spend approximately 3 hours per week and wives spend about 6 hours per week performing household tasks while engaged in another activity that they consider primary. Self-reported hours of both husbands and wives differ significantly from ESM measures of their total housework hours that include time spent on housework as a secondary activity.

    Table 1 indicates that wives and husbands spend between 2 and 3 hours per week on the mental labor of housework, thinking about household labor when they are not performing household tasks. Consistent with the expecta- tion of several researchers (Coleman, 1988; Thompson, 1991), the gender gap in time spent on mental labor is similar to the gap in time spent on housework itself. In addition, the kinds

    of tasks that married men and women think about are as gender typed as their actual perfor- mance of household tasks, which is consistent with the argument that women are held account- able for the success of these tasks but not for those less gender typed (Twiggs, McQuillan, & Ferree, 1999).

    Comparisons of Survey and ESM Time-Use Estimates

    Table 1 shows the statistical significance of dif- ferences between survey self-reports of time on each housework task and the three ESM esti- mates discussed above. We see that survey self- reports of husbands differ significantly from ESM estimates for the total of all tasks and for all separate tasks except cooking. For wives, survey self-reports differ significantly from ESM estimates of the total of all tasks and from ESM estimates of all separate tasks except yard and home maintenance.

    The bottom row of Table 1 gives estimates of total housework hours obtained from survey (self and spouse) and ESM (primary, primary plus secondary, and primary plus secondary plus mental). It also shows tests of the statistical significance of differences between the mea- sures. We see that husbands' hours of house- work reported on the survey differ significantly both from wives' survey estimates of husbands' time and from all ESM estimates of his time- those including only primary activity, primary plus secondary activity, and primary plus sec- ondary plus mental labor. Wives' survey reports of their hours spent on housework do not differ significantly from husbands' reports of wife's hours but do differ significantly from all ESM estimates of wives' hours.

    Table 2 shows the difference between hus- bands' and wives' time spent on housework and the share of housework done by the husband for each of the five estimates. The first row of Table 2 gives wives' survey reports of their own time on housework and their husbands' time on housework. The second row gives husbands' survey reports of their own and their wives' time. The next three rows give estimates from the ESM, using primary activities only, primary plus secondary activities, and primary and sec- ondary activities plus mental labor, for hus- bands and wives. Column 3 gives the difference in hours spent on housework (wives' hours minus husbands' hours), and Column 4 gives

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  • Measuring Time on Housework

    the proportion of housework done by the hus- band for each of the measures. Note that for all estimates, husbands' hours differ significantly from wives' hours.

    The Gender Gap in Housework

    Husbands and wives have different perceptions of the gap in their contributions to household labor, as Table 2 shows, even though they agree that wives spend more time on housework than husbands do. On average, the difference in hus- bands' reports of their own and their spouse's time on housework is 7.2 hours, whereas for wives the difference is 13.2 hours. In both cases, the difference between estimates of own time and estimates of spouse's time is statisti- cally significant.

    Various estimates differ in the conclusions they would suggest about husband's share of housework, as Column 4 of Table 2 shows. The lowest estimate of husband's share-33%- comes from the wife's responses on both her time on household tasks and her husband's time on those same tasks. The highest estimate- 42%-comes from the husband's responses for both himself and his wife. Estimates of hus- band's share based on ESM data fall between those based on answers to survey questions. All three ESM measures of the husband's share are virtually identical.

    CONCLUSIONS

    Using data collected through surveys and the ESM for husbands and wives from the same families in the Sloan 500 Family Study, we develop and compare a series of estimates for the division of household labor, which range from restrictive to inclusive. These estimates differ in the method of data collection, in who answers the questions and about whom they are asked, and what activities are included as housework. These estimates allow us to address our research questions.

    First, to what extent are estimates of hus- bands' and wives' housework time affected by who provides the information? Our results sug- gest that the answer is quite dramatic.

    We find that husbands and wives provide similar estimates of wives' time on household labor but divergent estimates of husbands' con- tributions. Previous studies often assume that husbands overestimate their own contribution

    (Press & Townsley, 1998) but that both hus- bands and wives make accurate assessments of the wife's time (Kamo, 2000). We find little support for this view. Analyses of the data from surveys and the ESM support the argument that wives make accurate estimates of husbands' time on housework, whereas husbands overesti- mate their own time. But these same analyses also suggest that both wives and husbands may substantially overestimate the amount of time wives spend on housework. These biases lead men and women to have different perceptions about the size of the gender gap in household labor. Our results suggest that, on average, wives in the Sloan Study think that they do 13 hours more housework per week than their hus- bands do. But husbands see the gap in hours as only about half as large. These different percep- tions of each spouse's contribution may lead to marital conflict (Hochschild, 1989), regardless of the actual amount of time that husbands and wives allocate to household labor (Wilkie, Ferree, & Ratcliff, 1998).

    Second, does the data collection method affect the estimates obtained? Our results sug- gest that it does, and that the differences between survey measures and ESM time-use measures are statistically significant and-for some estimates-quite substantial. Our ESM estimates of primary activities only show that wives in our sample spend 15 hours per week on housework. Survey estimates based on the wives' responses on their own time on house- work show 26 hours per week. This large and statistically significant difference in estimates between methods for the same individuals points to a substantial challenge for measure- ment of time spent on household labor.

    Third, does inclusion of secondary activities matter? Our results suggest that it does, although the effect is modest. Estimates of housework time for wives increase from 15 to 21.2 hours, with the inclusion of secondary activities. ESM data show that wives are more likely than husbands to report performance of household tasks as their secondary activity, so that adding secondary activities increases the housework gender gap from 5 to 8.2 hours and reduces the share of housework done by the husband slightly from 40% to 38%.

    Fourth, to what extent are estimates of house- work time and the housework gender gap affected by inclusion of time spent thinking about household tasks? Again, our results

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  • Journal of Marriage and Family

    suggest that the effect is modest. We find that husbands and wives spend 2-3 hours per week thinking about household labor even when they are not performing household tasks, which sup- ports Mederer's (1993) argument that these tasks are an important component of household labor. We also find that wives spend about 1 hour more per week on this mental labor than their husbands do, so including time spent thinking about housework raises our estimates of the housework gender gap slightly to 9.4 hours per week and decreases husband's share of housework modestly from 40% to 37%.

    Fifth, do conclusions about the size of the gender division of labor depend on whether one uses absolute differences in hours or the propor- tion of housework done by the husband? This is a complicated question to answer. Hours pro- vide a convenient metric, easily translated into dollars given a wage rate or into days lost to work or leisure. So, a gender gap of 13 hours, which we estimate if we use the wife's report of her own and her husband's time on housework, suggests that women are working almost 2 full days more than their husbands, on average. In- terpreting the proportion of housework done by husbands is more complicated because this measure depends on both how much time the husband spends cleaning, shopping, and doing yard work and how much time the wife spends on similar tasks. Husband's share can go up because either he does more or his wife does less, as Bianchi et al. (2000) point out.

    We find that the proportion of housework done by the husband varies from 33% to 42% over our various estimates. The absolute gap varies from 5.0 to 13.2 hours. Note that both the largest absolute gaps and the smallest propor- tion done by the husband come from the wife's estimates of her time and her husband's time. The smallest absolute gap in hours comes from ESM estimates that include primary activ- ity only.

    Implications of these findings are clear: Con- clusions about the size of the gender gap in housework depend substantially on who pro- vides the information about time spent on housework, what information that person is asked to provide, and how housework is defined. Results show large and statistically sig- nificant differences between survey self-reports of housework time and those estimated from the ESM collected in response to random signals over the course of a week for primary activities.

    This suggests that researchers should be quite cautious in their use of measures that simply add together respondent reports on the amount of time spent in a typical week on a series of housework tasks. This method of assessing total hours spent on housework seems to provide an upper-bound estimate. Comparison of survey and ESM estimates suggests that wives inflate their own time substantially more than they inflate their husbands', whereas husbands over- estimate both their own time and their wives' time more consistently. This means that studies that use both the wife's report of her own time on housework and her report of her husband's time on housework (Goldscheider & Waite, 1991) contain substantial bias that differs for the husband and wife.

    Results reported here also suggest that re- searchers should give considerable thought to the treatment of housework done as a secondary activity. A sizable proportion of time spent on housework is done in conjunction with other ac- tivities, often other housework tasks. A re- searcher might decide to count only the time spent primarily on housework to limit total time spent to a 24-hour day. Altematively, a researcher might decide to give full credit for time spent on housework while doing another activity, thereby allowing a respondent to get credit for 2 hours of housework when only 1 hour of total work was done. Estimates that ignore housework done as a secondary activity provide a conservative, lower bound of time spent. Perhaps more important, estimates of housework as a primary activity suggest that dual-career middle- and upper- middle-class mothers and fathers spend modest amounts of time on housework in an average week-only about 15 hours for women and about 10 hours for men. Adding time spent doing housework while also doing something else brings ESM estimates closer to those ob- tained from survey questions.

    Consideration of housework done as a sec- ondary activity gives us a way to reconcile the very large differences between survey responses and time-use data in estimates of own time in household labor. Tasks done frequently, in small blocks of time, seem to be difficult for re- spondents to summarize into a number of hours a week spent on that task. Thus, they may think of the task as taking the whole block of time during which it was done, rather than as 10 minutes here and there within that block while other activities consumed the remainder.

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  • Measuring Time on Housework

    We argue that researchers using measures of housework time obtained from responses to sur- vey questions should think about these measures as including both primary and secondary house- work activities, with double counting of two housework activities done at the same time. They should also keep in mind that when re- spondents report housework as a secondary ac- tivity, they are most commonly engaged in another housework task as their primary activity.

    Wives' time on housework measured by an- swers to survey questions asked of either wives about their own time or husbands about their wives' time is quite similar to ESM estimates that include primary plus secondary plus mental activity on household tasks (26.0 vs. 24.9 vs. 23.5). Although wives' self-reports differ statis- tically from the most inclusive ESM estimate, husbands' estimates of wives' housework time do not. The mechanisms that produce this simi- larity are unclear, but it is possible that re- spondents think about household tasks more globally than do researchers constructing survey questions, and so include time planning for household tasks or doing several at once. Re- spondents may also include in their time esti- mates other activities that they consider as necessary preludes to or components of the household tasks about which they are asked.

    This study has a number of limitations that must be kept in mind. First, the data used in this study are limited in ways that may affect the re- sults. The married couples in the sample were selected from a small number of communities, so the sample is not nationally representative. The married couples that agreed to participate in this study may also differ from those in the nation as a whole in the amount of time they spend on housework. A larger and perhaps more important issue is that most husbands and wives in the sample are drawn from middle- or upper-middle-class communities, with rela- tively high levels of education and income compared to the population of the United States as a whole. These families purchase more serv- ices to replace spouses' time in housework than most families in the United States (Spitze, 1999). Highly educated men and women also tend to hold more liberal attitudes than others toward the appropriate role for men and women and toward the division of household labor, which tends to increase husband's participation. For these reasons, with a more nationally repre- sentative sample, the housework gender gap

    may be more pronounced. Second, we treat all housework tasks equally, although some recent research (Coltrane, 2000; Twiggs et al., 1999) suggests that tasks differ both in the extent to which they are done more frequently by one gender and in the frequency with which they are done. Future research might explore the differ- ences in measures of housework tasks for these different types. Third, our comparison focuses on housework rather than on the broader cate- gory of household labor. Future research should explore measurement issues when time spent on child care and on emotional labor are included.

    NOTE

    The research reported here was supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Center on Parents, Children, and Work at the Univer- sity of Chicago. An early version was presented at the 2001 annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, Anaheim, California.

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    Article Contentsp. 328p. 329p. 330p. 331p. 332p. 333p. 334p. 335p. 336

    Issue Table of ContentsJournal of Marriage and Family, Vol. 67, No. 2 (May, 2005), pp. 271-542Front MatterErratum: The Role of Cohabitation in Family Formation: The United States in Comparative PerspectiveCohabitationA Comparison of Cohabiting Relationships among Older and Younger Adults [pp. 271-285]How Do Cohabiting Couples with Children Spend Their Money? [pp. 286-295]Premarital Cohabitation and Marital Disruption among White, Black, and Mexican American Women [pp. 296-314]The Economic Consequences of the Dissolution of Cohabiting Unions [pp. 315-327]

    Work and FamilyHusbands' and Wives' Time Spent on Housework: A Comparison of Measures [pp. 328-336]Why Emotion Work Matters: Sex, Gender, and the Division of Household Labor [pp. 337-351]Family Roles and Work Values: Processes of Selection and Change [pp. 352-369]Instability in Patchworks of Child Care When Moving from Welfare to Work [pp. 370-386]Retirement and Marital Decision Making: Effects on Retirement Satisfaction [pp. 387-398]

    Resources and PowerMarried Women's Resource Position and Household Food Expenditures in Cebu, Philippines [pp. 399-409]Women's Family Power and Gender Preference in Minya, Egypt [pp. 410-428]

    Parenthood and ParentingThe Timing of Entry into Fatherhood in Young, At-Risk Men [pp. 429-447]Predictors of Parenting among African American Single Mothers: Personal and Contextual Factors [pp. 448-460]How the Birth of a Child Affects Involvement with Stepchildren [pp. 461-473]Parents' Awareness of Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Youths' Sexual Orientation [pp. 474-482]

    Of General InterestTestosterone, Marital Quality, and Role Overload [pp. 483-498]Residential Mobility and the Onset of Adolescent Sexual Activity [pp. 499-514]Family and Child Characteristics Linking Neighborhood Context and Child Externalizing Behavior [pp. 515-529]

    Book ReviewsReview: untitled [pp. 530-531]Review: untitled [pp. 531-532]Review: untitled [pp. 532-533]Review: untitled [pp. 533-534]Review: untitled [pp. 534-535]Review: untitled [pp. 535-537]Review: untitled [pp. 537-538]Review: untitled [pp. 538-540]Review: untitled [pp. 540-541]

    Back Matter [pp. 542-542]