The Provider Role: Its Meaning and Measurement

Although reallocation of the provider-role responsibility is often assumed to be an important predictor of role sharing in two-job families, very few researchers have measured the provider role itself. Instead, the wife's employment status and the husband/wife wage ratio are used as proxies. Those survey researchers who have measured the provider role have often failed to make distinctions among global values, behavior-specific norms, and reports of actual behavior. Based on CPS statistics, a review of provider-role measures, and insights gained from the author's qualitative study of dual-worker couples, this article argues that the failure to employ direct measures of the provider role and underconceptualization of existing provider-role measures have prevented family researchers from adequately testing hypotheses linking wives' employment to division of household labor. It concludes with suggestions for improved measurement of the provider role.