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Abstract
This study examines how historical transitions that occurred during individuals’ young adulthood are related to the division of housework among married couples in urban China. Using data from the 2006 China Health and Nutrition Survey, analyses compare housework participation among 398 married couples from the pre-reform generation, 432 couples from the early-reform generation, and 107 couples from the late-reform generation. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression results show that regardless of generation, wives continue to undertake the majority of housework. Significant shifts in housework are found across generations among men, wherein husbands of the pre-reform generation spend more time on housework than husbands in the two reform generations. Although the division of housework remains highly gendered across generations, findings suggest that a political endeavor toward promoting gender equality may have played a role in altering men's housework behaviors.
About the Author
Zhe Zhang is a PhD candidate in the department of sociology at the Ohio State University. Her research interests include family, health, life course, gender, social stratification, and statistical methodology.
Notes
Check the following website for a detailed description of research design: http://www.cpc.unc.edu/projects/china.
The legal retirement age for Chinese women is 55; sensitivity analysis on a sample of 20-to-55-year-old couples reports similar results.
Sensitivity analysis using husband's birth year to construct generations reports similar results.
China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) contains one question about the time spent taking care of each parent only among married women under the age of 52 and one question about the time spent caring for children under 6 years old.
Sensitivity analysis on housework ratio reports similar results.
Presence of young children and coresidential parents are dummy variables.
Sensitivity analysis finds no differential effects of these variables (i.e., young children in the household and coresidence with parents) on couples’ housework division by generation.
Missing values are substituted with the corresponding mean for the specific housework task; see Greenstein (Citation2000) for a similar approach.
Sensitivity analysis finds a bigger proportion of men to participate in grocery shopping than any other housework task.