Quantity and Quality: A More Nuanced Look at the Association Between Family Work and Marital Well-Being

ABSTRACT

The current study uses family systems and gender theories to look at three forms of family work (housework, emotion work, and child care) and their association with marital satisfaction and burnout. Data were taken from a sample of dual-earner mothers and fathers parenting preschool-age children. First, relationships between the quantity of family work performed and marital well-being were established. Then, measures related to the perceived “quality” of child care provided by a spouse (childcare appraisals and, for wives, maternal gatekeeping) were added to the statistical model. Overall, emotion work was the most influential predictor of women’s marital well-being. For fathers, the perceived quality of care provided by mothers was most significant for marital well-being.

KEYWORDS:

• child care
• dual earners
• emotion work
• housework
• marital quality
• maternal gatekeeping

Notes

In preliminary regression models, respondents’ education, income, and work hours were included as control variables. Because the sample size is small and these variables were not statistically significantly associated with the dependent variables, they were omitted from the regression equations presented here to create more parsimonious models. Ten to 15 cases per variable are suggested in OLS regression (Field, 2005).