COLUMBUS, Ohio – Although many well-paid, well-educated working couples believe they divide the labors of child-rearing and housework evenly, some new research at Ohio State University suggests that is not true.
Just in time for Mother’s Day, a study using diaries kept by new mothers and fathers indicated that both spouses worked more around the house after the arrival of a new baby, but by widely varying amounts.
Before the baby was born, the research indicated the 182 couples studied were sharing household chores relatively equally, spending about four hours of extra work each day, but the time diaries showed women’s workloads increased by two hours a day after the baby was born, while men’s total working time each day increased by only about 40 minutes.
“The birth of the child dramatically changed the division of labor in these couples,” said Jill Yavorsky, co-author of the study and doctoral student in sociology at OSU. “What was once a relatively even division of household work no longer looked that way.”
According to the study, men cut back on housework by five hours per week, while women did not reduce their housework to compensate for additional childcare work.
“Women ended up shouldering a lot more of the work that comes with a new baby, even though both men and women thought they added the same amount of additional work,” said Claire Kamp Dush, co-author of the study an associate professor of human sciences at OSU.
One explanation for women’s increased post-parenthood workloads compared to men has been that they are spending less time at their paid jobs.
The data came from The New Parents Project, a long-term study that is investigating how dual-earner couples adjust to becoming parents for the first time. Participants tend to have higher-than-average levels of education, both spouses have jobs and both spouses report their intention to keep working after the child is born.
Sarah Schoppe-Sullivan, professor of human sciences, also co-authored the study, which appears in the June 2015 issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family. Her research suggests some mothers “gatekeep,” controlling how much fathers are involved in child care and what they can do.