Chapter 5Dividing Domestic Labour and Care
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Oriel Sullivan
Evrim Altintas
The division of domestic labour refers to the division of unpaid household work and care between household or family members. It is part of, and is related to, the wider domestic division of labour, which describes the division of paid and unpaid work between family members.1 In common parlance, it’s about the ‘who does how much of what around the house’ question that forms the focus of so many marital discussions, negotiations and disputes. In fact, who does the housework has long been recognized as being a major source of emotion and conflict about fairness and equity within partnerships.2 A recent BBC Woman’s Hour online survey tool, to which the Centre for Time Use Research contributed, allowed partners to assess their own domestic divisions of labour. With this tool, respondents rate their own and their partner’s contributions to domestic chores like cooking, cleaning, laundry and grocery shopping. Jane Garvey of Woman’s Hour put it this way: ‘Anecdotally women say, “We are exhausted and he’s lazy!” But is it true? If you are in charge of putting out the bins, does that mean you get off the ironing? How many rows are rooted in anger and resentment about who does what in our homes and how often?’ The so-called ‘Chore Wars calculator’ shows how much interest, and emotion, this subject can generate.
When feminist sociologists started to look within the ‘black box’ of the family in the 1960s and 70s, they revealed the hidden burden of ‘women’s work’, and the boredom and isolation that went with having main responsibility for looking after the home.3 Up to that point, the division of the paid and unpaid work necessary to the functioning of a ‘typical’ (heterosexual nuclear family) household had been treated in academic research as relatively unproblematic. Economists had tended to see it in terms of rational decision-making – it was rational that the person who could earn the highest wage (at that time, almost always the man) should be in paid employment, while the person with lower qualifications and potential wages (almost always the woman) would look after the home. Since that time, the extent and significance of this ‘women’s burden’ has become a major area of sociological research, and a recent focus of media attention, with many column inches devoted to persisting gender inequality in the home, and how it might be remedied. It has also been a topic of great relevance to the development of national policies around parental leave and childcare. In addition, the growing awareness of the contribution of unpaid domestic work to national economies has meant that the valuation of unpaid work and care within the home is now in many countries becoming an important feature of national accounting (see Chapter 6).
Research into the division of domestic labour and care over the past half-century in all areas of the world has shown that women still do the vast majority of family work in heterosexual couples, and that, despite some changes in the direction of greater gender equality, this pattern persists in the face of increasing female employment. However, while the cross-sectional gap in the domestic labour and care done by women and men is still large, the main trends that have been observed over the past half-century are: 1) a substantial decline in women’s domestic work time; 2) a slight increase in men’s domestic work time; and 3) large increases in time devoted to childcare for both sexes. The overall result of these trends has been a convergence in the direction of greater gender equality in the division of unpaid work and care.4
Of course, overall trends across the whole population can hide a myriad of differences between various population subgroups. Researchers who have reviewed the factors affecting unpaid work across the previous decades agree that, among the major factors affecting the amount of time that women and men spend in domestic work and care are family and employment status, and educational level.5 In general, those who are employed do less housework and care than those who are not employed (particularly less than women who are staying at home to care for children), while paid work hours among the employed are negatively associated with time spent in domestic work in a straightforward way (the greater the hours spent in employment, the less time spent on housework and care). Family status is also highly influential in determining time spent on both housework and childcare. Both the fathers and, especially, the mothers of young children spend more time in domestic work and care than those without children. This effect is, of course, particularly strong among mothers staying at home to care for children. Among socio-economic factors, educational level has perhaps the most important effect; overall the higher the level of women’s education the less housework they do, while the opposite is true for men. In distinction to this contrasting trend by gender, the higher the level of education, the more childcare both men and women do.
There are known to be many other factors that come into play in the determination of time spent in housework and care activities. For example, gender ideology (couples where both agree that men and women should share career and family responsibilities equally have more equal divisions of domestic labour and care); the absolute and relative financial resources of spouses (in general, the higher the absolute and relative income of one spouse, the less housework they do); and the sexuality of the couple (lesbian women have been shown to be the most equal in their division of domestic work, ahead of gay men and heterosexual couples). There is a huge literature about the complicated effect of all these factors, separately and in combination.
In this chapter we first give an overview of trends in women’s and men’s time spent in domestic labour and care using the UK time-use data series. We then illustrate, according to the arguments made above, the variations in domestic labour and care time for women and men in different family and employment statuses, and with different educational levels. In the latter part of the chapter we focus particularly on men’s contributions. In an international context of increases in women’s paid work time and corresponding overall declines in their housework time, whether, and in what circumstances, men are doing more is crucial to understanding the direction in which the gender gap in unpaid work is heading. For example, and following on from the findings of the previous chapter in relation to the growth of non-standard employment schedules, a growing body of research suggests that non- and irregularly employed fathers are likely to spend more time caring for children than their employed counterparts.6 Obviously being at home creates more opportunities for spending time with children, and, when combined with the general increase in the time that fathers seem to spend with their children, this is an intuitively likely outcome. Non-employed fathers consist mainly of unemployed men and those on non-standard employment contracts, but they also include a small but growing percentage of full-time carer fathers. Both these subgroups have been increasing over the 21st century due primarily to higher levels of male under-employment. An analysis of US fathers who were ‘highly involved’ with their children (measured in terms of the time they spent in childcare activities) found that highly involved fathers were nearly twice as likely not to be in employment as non-involved fathers.7
The second issue we address in relation to fathers’ contributions to childcare is differences by educational level.8 A significant increase in parental time spent in childcare is observed, starting from the 1990s. This is the period when the social ideals of intensive patterns of parenting and, in particular, involved fathering spread widely.9 Research has shown that highly educated parents are likely to provide not only more basic physical care for their children, but also to spend more time in developmental-related childcare activities, such as reading and playing with children. These findings match the theoretical expectation that highly educated parents are more likely to focus their time on activities that improve their children’s social and cognitive skills, perhaps with an eye to aiding access to prestigious educational establishments. The overall result is a growing gap in the time spent in childcare between those with high levels of educational attainment and those with lower levels.
Setting the scene: the UK historical trend
An interesting question when we consider the UK TUS data series is whether we can observe a ‘stall’ in the process of convergence in the direction of greater gender equality in unpaid work, as discussed in an international context in Chapter 3. The idea of a ‘stall’ in gender convergence emerged in the US at the end of the first decade of the 21st century in response to several factors: a slow-down in mothers’ labour force engagement; a slow-down in women’s entry into male-dominated college subjects; and some apparent increase in conservative attitudes. These trends, together with evidence from other countries for a slow-down in the proportions agreeing with statements supporting gender egalitarian attitudes, seemed to offer support for the idea that the trend towards gender convergence in the division of labour had slowed. Large-scale analyses based on time-use data also seem to show that there was a slowing of gender convergence from the late 1980s in those countries where men and women’s time in housework was already more equal, with steeper gender convergence continuing in those countries where the gender division of housework was less equal.10 The media have been quick to seize on the idea, presenting the idea of a ‘stalled revolution’ as meaning that we’ve got as far as we’re going to get with the gender revolution.
Figure 5.1 shows trends in the average (mean) minutes spent in domestic work and care for the UK from the 1970s through to 2015.
Figure 5.1 Average minutes in domestic work tasks: women and men aged 18 and over, UK (1974–2015)
All domestic work
Core domestic work
Childcare
Core domestic work in Figure 5.1 includes cooking, cleaning and clothes care. Childcare includes all forms of childcare, plus child-related travel, and ‘all domestic work’ includes all these categories, plus other domestic work like gardening, DIY and shopping (including shopping-related travel). For UK women aged 18 and over, there was a steep decline in the average time spent doing core domestic work, from 189 minutes per day in 1974 to 109 minutes per day in 2015. Time spent in childcare rose from 25 to 39 minutes over the same period (averaged across mothers and non-mothers). Time spent on all unpaid work tasks combined also decreased over the period, although not as steeply as the trend for core domestic work.
For men, on the other hand, there has been an overall increase in the time spent in housework. This increase, from 22 minutes in 1974 to 48 minutes in 2015, however, does not match the magnitude of the decrease in women’s housework and, moreover, all happened during the period 1975–2000, declining slightly over the first decade of the 21st century. This kind of slow-down is exactly what has led some commentators to ask the question: ‘So who is doing the housework?’! The overall time men spent on childcare showed a slight increase over the period, from 11 to 18 minutes (again, averaged across fathers and non-fathers). Men’s overall average time in all forms of unpaid work rose until 2000, then fell again by 8 minutes by 2015.
On the basis of these overall trends, then, there appears to be some evidence in support of the ‘stall hypothesis’ in the UK: there has been a slight decrease in men’s contributions to housework and overall unpaid work since the year 2000. Women’s contributions, on the other hand, continued to fall in the 2000s (again with the exception of childcare time, which rose somewhat). In terms of men’s share of all unpaid work tasks, this has risen steadily since the 1970s, from 27 to 38 per cent of all unpaid work. Their share of core housework has increased even more steeply, from a much lower base (10 per cent in 1974) to close to a third in 2015 (31 per cent). However, it is important to note that the overwhelming reason for these overall increases in men’s share has been the decline in the time that women spend in these activities, rather than increases in the time that men spend doing them. Men’s share of childcare time has remained relatively constant at just under a third of all time spent in childcare throughout the period. This is because time spent in childcare has been rising for both men and women (unlike the case for core domestic work, where women’s time has fallen steeply).
These trends paint a somewhat depressing picture from the perspective of gender equality, and seem to lend support to the idea of the ‘stall hypothesis’. However, it may be that the level of generality shown here is misleading. If we focus in more detail on what is happening to different population groups within this overall picture, more nuanced findings emerge that may offer some hope for the continuation of the move towards gender convergence in domestic work and care.
Differences by family and employment status
This section illustrates contemporary variations in the time spent in domestic work and care between different population subgroups. The idea is to put the spotlight on those groups who are most likely to be under the most intense pressure of time due to their combination of family and employment commitments. Accordingly, Figure 5.2 shows average minutes spent per day on core housework and childcare for three subgroups of parents: full-time-employed spouses with children aged under 18 in their household; employed single parents of children aged under 18 in their household; and non-employed spouses with children aged under 18 in their household. The first two of these groups are likely to be under more pressure of time trying to combine employment with childcare. In contrast, the final group (non-employed spouses with children) are likely to have more available time to do different kinds of family work, including domestic work and looking after children. For comparison, we also show the same results for the whole population aged 18 and over.
The most striking thing about this figure is the differing amounts of time spent in these activities by men and women. In general, as we saw above, women do more core housework, childcare and overall domestic work. Nonetheless there are some interesting distinctions when we focus in more closely on the different subgroups of parents. For example, we can see that those who are likely to be under the greatest time pressure (full-time employed partnered parents and single employed parents) spend less time in core housework than the average for all those aged 18 or more. Employed single-parent mothers also spend somewhat less time in childcare than full-time employed partnered parents. By comparison, though, single-parent fathers spend very little time in childcare (and much less than full-time employed partnered fathers). This may be because they are paying for childcare services, or possibly because relatives are helping out. Non-employed parents spend the most time overall on all these domestic activities. The difference between non-employed parents and other parents is most striking for non-employed mothers, who do much more unpaid work overall both than other mothers and than non-employed fathers. However, interestingly, the difference between non-employed and other parents also applies to non-employed fathers, who spend considerably more time in domestic and care activities than other fathers.
Average minutes per day in housework and care tasks: selected family and employment groups by gender, UK (2015)
All 18+ — comparison with whole population aged over 18
FTsp+kids — full-time employed, married or living as married, with children under 18 in the household
Emp SP — employed single parent with children under 18 in the household
NEsp+kids — non-employed, married or living as married with children under 18 in the household
The introduction of paid work time into the equation poses a rather different question. Which subgroups are likely to be the most pressured for time, when we sum both unpaid and paid work time together? Figure 5.3 shows totals of overall work time (all paid and unpaid tasks) for mothers and fathers in the three subgroups identified above: those full-time employed, married with children aged under 18 in their household; employed single parents with children aged under 18 in their household; and those non-employed, married with children aged under 18 in their household. The total for all women and men aged 18 and over is also shown for comparison.
Figure 5.3 shows that, for both women and men, those who spend the longest time working (and, correspondingly, have the least rest and recuperation time) are those combining full-time employment with parenthood. They are followed by single-parent mothers and fathers, with little to choose between them in terms of overall workload. Both these groups of fathers spend longer hours in employment than equivalent mothers, but they do less unpaid work and care. Employed single mothers, by contrast, spend less time in paid employment and much more time in unpaid work. Finally, all the subgroups shown do substantially more work overall than the population averages for their gender, with the exception of non-employed married fathers. By definition these fathers spend only minimal amounts of time in paid work, so almost all their work time consists of unpaid work. The same, of course, is true for non-employed married mothers, who nonetheless do considerably more unpaid work!
Average minutes per day in all work: selected family and employment groups by gender, UK (2015)
All 18+ - comparison with whole population aged over 18
FTsp+kids - full-time employed, married or living as married, with children under 18 in the household
Emp SP - employed single parent with children under 18 in the household
NEsp+kids - non-employed, married or living as married with children under? 18 in the household
Women
Men
Figure 5.3 makes clear the existing gap in mothers’ and fathers’ overall work times, in particular among non-employed married parents. However, we can get a feel for what’s going on in relation to the vital question of changes in fathers’ contributions by looking more closely at trends across time for these groups. Figure 5.4 shows trends for two subgroups: one likely to be under considerable pressure of time (full-time employed partnered parents), and one with more time availability (non-employed partnered parents). Summing up all the work (paid and unpaid) done by fathers and mothers in these categories, the trend lines in Figure 5.4 show the share (percentage) of overall work time done by fathers in these subgroups.
We can see that for those men who are under the greater pressure of time, i.e. full-time employed partnered fathers, there wasn’t much change in their overall share over time (a slight increase, from 48 per cent to 50 per cent of all paid and unpaid work). The overall work done by full-time employed fathers today equals that done by full-time employed mothers, and this trend appears to have been relatively consistent over time. The picture looks quite different, though, for the group of fathers with more time availability, i.e. non-employed fathers. In 1974 non-employed partnered fathers contributed only 23 per cent of the overall work done by non-employed partnered parents. However, by 2015 this had risen steadily to 41 per cent. Since these fathers are by definition not in employment, this work is entirely made up of unpaid activities like housework, childcare and other domestic work. It appears that non-employed fathers have almost doubled their share around the house (even though in total they still contribute only 41 per cent of all work done by non-employed parents).
Figure 5.4 Men’s share (percentage) of all work time: selected family and employment groups, UK (1974–2015)
Non-employed, married or living as married with children under 18 in the household
Full-time employed, married or living as married with children under 18 in the household
Differences by educational level: trends and polarization?
Turning to trends in domestic work and care differentiated by level of education, Figures 5.5 and 5.6 show average minutes spent in core housework and childcare according to educational level for women and men respectively. Level of education is shown amalgamated into three groups: those with low (incomplete secondary education), middle (complete secondary level) and high levels (above secondary level education). From Figure 5.5, for women, we can see differences in the trend over time when we contrast core housework with childcare. Highly educated women do less housework, although housework time declines noticeably over time for women of all educational levels. On the other hand, childcare time has in general increased over the period 1974 to 2015, and more highly educated women spend on average longer in childcare. There are some interesting differences in these trends, though, for women with different educational levels. The main increase for the most highly educated women seemed to come between 1974 and 1985, and has thereafter been more stable, while for those women with lower educational levels the main increase occurred slightly later, in the 1990s (between the 1985 and 2000 surveys), declining somewhat thereafter.
Figure 5.5 Average minutes in core house work and childcare by educational level: women aged 18–65, UK (2015)
2015
2000
1985
1974
Figure 5.6 Average minutes in core house work and childcare by educational level: men aged 18–65, UK (2015)
2015
2000
1985
1974
The fact that more highly educated women do less housework is well known, and in part at least reflects the reality that they are more likely to have jobs – and within that category they are more likely to have full-time career jobs. In general, the higher the income that people have, the less housework they do. Women with lower levels of education are more likely to be in part-time employment, and to have more available time for housework. However, the reverse picture for childcare tells us that the distribution of paid employment by educational level cannot be the whole story. In the case of childcare, women with the highest levels of educational attainment, who are most likely to be in full-time career jobs and therefore under greater pressure of time, do more childcare than their counterparts. This finding corresponds to results from other countries, so it is not just a UK phenomenon. It probably relates to something described earlier: the ideology of intensive childcare as the ‘ideal’ form of parenting is more prevalent among those with higher educational levels. The higher aspirations that highly educated parents may have for their children’s educational futures also leads to increased time being spent in childcare of the kind thought to promote such futures (i.e. ‘developmental’ childcare).11
We see some broadly similar trends in men’s average childcare time by educational attainment (Figure 5.6). Both more highly educated women and more highly educated men do more childcare – probably for the same reasons. But, interestingly, the pattern for men shows a steadier increase in childcare over time for all educational levels, rather than levelling off in the first decade of the 21st century as it does for women. Furthermore, the increase between 2000 and 2015 is most pronounced for the most highly educated men. It may be that more highly educated men are increasingly exposed to ideologies about intensive fathering and that this continues to have an effect in greater amounts of time spent in childcare activities.
Trends in core housework for men also differ by educational level. While, from the 1980s, those with the lowest level of education did progressively less housework over time (starting from a higher level), those men with middle and high levels of education are doing somewhat more over time. Here we are unable to draw upon materialistic explanations relating to career employment, since highly educated men with career employment spend more time in paid work now than they did in the 1970s (see Chapter 4). Instead, we might rely on gender ideology as at least a partial explanation; for example, higher levels of education among men have been shown to be increasingly associated over time with attitudes that are more supportive of gender equality.12
We return here to an issue that was identified earlier on in this chapter: ‘involved fathering’. We have seen that more highly educated men are spending more time in childcare; we now ask whether father care time is increasing generally, or whether we can identify particular groups of fathers who are spending more and more time in childcare over time, in a process that has been described as the ‘polarization’ of father care.13 For this analysis the focus is on fathers aged under 50 with children aged 12 and under, who spent 15 or more minutes per day in childcare, comparing them to all fathers of the same ages with children of the same ages. The first group we refer to as ‘involved fathers’, since they do at least make what might be considered some meaningful contribution to the daily care of their children (enough time, at least, to change a nappy, or read a story).
In fact, the percentage of involved fathers according to this definition more than doubles over the 40-year period from 1974 to 2015, from 31 per cent to 64 per cent. In other words, on average twice as many men are actively involved in care of their children (where active involvement is defined as spending at least 15 minutes a day in childcare). However, what is noticeable is that while this percentage has increased relatively modestly since the 1980s, there was a far more marked increase in the average time that these involved fathers were spending in childcare. So while in the 1980s 52 per cent of fathers of this age did at least 15 minutes per day of daily childcare, the average time these 52 per cent spent on childcare was 74 minutes per day. By 2015 the percentage of involved fathers had increased to 64 per cent, but the average minutes these fathers were spending in childcare had increased much more, by over half an hour, from 74 minutes to 109 minutes – i.e. from approximately 1 hour 15 minutes per day to 1 hour 50 minutes per day. It does seem, therefore, that we may be observing a polarization effect over recent decades, whereby the percentage of involved fathers has increased comparatively slowly, while for those fathers who are actively involved, the average time that they devote to childcare has been increasing more rapidly.
The main findings of this chapter confirm that UK women’s housework time continues to decline. For men there was a slight rise, but then a levelling off since 2000. Time spent on childcare per day on the overall level has risen by 14 minutes since the 1970s for women, and by half that for men (see Figure 5.1). Therefore, the increase in men’s share of housework and overall unpaid work shown in Figure 5.2 is largely driven by declines in women’s time in these activities, rather than notable increases in men’s contributions. The effect of these trends is to create a levelling off in the process of convergence towards gender equality in housework, a phenomenon common to many countries where levels of gender equality were already relatively high by the 1990s. In this sense, the UK data lend support to the idea of a stall in the movement towards gender convergence in housework.
Against this rather pessimistic conclusion at the overall level, there are some indications of more positive signs when we break the data down into subgroups of the population. Since the stall in the process of gender convergence seems primarily to be about men’s contributions, we have focused on these. Firstly, non-employed men are spending markedly more time in unpaid work and care over time (Figure 5.4). Increases in the number of non-employed men since the turn of the 21st century, largely due to the recession, combined with this increasing trend in the time spent in unpaid work and care, give hope that men who spend more time at home will continue to devote increasing amounts of that time to domestic work and care. Although still representing only a small minority, there are also growing numbers of households in which the woman is the main economic provider, and fathers take on the carer role. It is likely that the changes in gender ideology that support this arrangement (in particular, the increasing popularity of the idea of the ‘involved father’) will in time become more diffused within the general population.
One of the mechanisms that might help to promote this diffusion is increasing levels of education, particularly to degree level. The positive gradient of the relationship between time spent in childcare and education level for men is most pronounced in 2015 (Figure 5.6). As education levels increase, the known relationship between higher educational levels and attitudes in favour of greater gender equality should hopefully lead to an increase in gender ideologies that favour both equality and involved fatherhood.
Finally, we observe suggestive evidence for an increasing polarization in father care. It seems that the percentage of ‘involved’ fathers with children aged 12 and under is growing steadily over time. However, increasing even more rapidly is the amount of time that such fathers devote to childcare. Nearly 2 hours a day on average is a substantial amount of time. The signs are that an increasing percentage of fathers are making efforts to spend significant amounts of time with their children. This finding, too, accords with previous research. More highly educated parents are devoting increasing amounts of time to promoting their children’s education. And in fact higher educational levels are also associated with increasing time spent in core housework over time (Figure 5.6), suggesting that an interpretation relating to increasing gender egalitarian ideologies among the highly educated may have more salience than those based on more materially directed arguments.14 The hope is that, through processes of social diffusion,15 ideologies in support of gender egalitarianism will spread more widely through the population. The big question will be whether social policies and managerial cultures that equate time spent in the workplace with effort and worth will be able to adapt sufficiently to support such changes.