The Division of Labor in the Home: A Review and Reconceptualization

I review and synthesize the literature on the division of labor in the home, noting some theoretical omissions and advancing a model that may accountforfindings in the literature. Researchers generally have failed to specify the mechanism by which family work divisions create distress, how housework and paid work affirm gendered identities, and the cognitive responses to family work patterns that do not confirm self identities. Also, researchers often rely on gender ideology as a predictor of housework participation despite its limited explanatory power. These issues might be addressed by combining the doing gender approach with affect control theory and identity theory and by conceptualizing gender ideology as an identity rather than as a set of beliefs. Specifically, people may select family work activities that allow them to affirm the affective meanings of their identity. But if economic or social constraints force family members to do work that is not consistent with their identity, the discrepancy between their identity and their work patterns may create distress. To try to reduce the distress, people may change the meaning of some element of their family work arrangement; identity commitment may determine the focus of the change. Although the model is not tested here, it is data-based in that it arises from a synthesis of many studies of the division of labor and is grounded in affect control theory, an empirically supported theory.