Premium
Investigating Gender Differences in the Meaning of Household Chores and Child Care
Author(s) -
Kroska Amy
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
journal of marriage and family
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.578
H-Index - 159
eISSN - 1741-3737
pISSN - 0022-2445
DOI - 10.1111/j.1741-3737.2003.00456.x
Subject(s) - psychology , meaning (existential) , task (project management) , child care , social psychology , laundry , work (physics) , gender role , developmental psychology , power (physics) , care work , medicine , nursing , mechanical engineering , management , archaeology , engineering , economics , psychotherapist , history , physics , quantum mechanics
This study examines factors related to the affective meanings (evaluation, potency, and activity) that spouses and cohabitors ( N = 309) attach to child care, baby care, and 9 household chores. Gender is related to about a third of these task meanings. Consistent with the feminine care hypothesis, women consider baby care and laundry especially good, potent, and active and consider meal preparation particularly powerful, although contrary to this hypothesis women evaluate washing dishes less positively than men. Consistent with the masculine care hypothesis, men consider auto work and yard work especially good and powerful. When paid and unpaid work patterns are controlled, however, 9 of the 12 gender differences become nonsignificant and 4 new gender differences are identified, suggesting that work patterns both mediate and suppress some gender differences in task meanings. Gender also moderates the relationship between work and 12 task meanings. In several of these equations, women's proportion of nonmasculine work is negatively related to the goodness or the power they associate with a nonmasculine task.