In the United States, ambiguity in division of household responsibilities between working couples often results in ongoing negotiations, resentment, and tension. According to a 2007 Pew Research Center poll, sharing household chores was in the top three highest-ranking issues associated with a successful marriage—third only to faithfulness and good sex. In this poll, 62 percent of adults said that sharing household chores is very important to marital success. There were no differences of opinion reported between men and women, between older adults and younger adults, or between married people and singles.
Mirroring trends in industrialized nations around the world, men’s participation in housework in U.S. families has nearly doubled in the past 40 years, and their amount of time spent on childcare has tripled. Yet in the United States women still perform the majority of household tasks, and most of the couples in our study reported having no clear models for achieving a mutually satisfying arrangement.
Determining who was responsible for various household tasks was a particularly contentious process for couples who tended to bicker about housework on a regular basis. Other couples, however, appeared to carry out tasks separately or in collaboration without much tension or discussion.
Studying how couples divide their many household chores is important on its own terms, as the results of the Pew poll suggest. More important, close examination of how husbands and wives collaborate on or fail to coordinate their household activities allows us to contemplate more encompassing phenomena such as gender roles;
issues of power, respect, and intimacy; and attempts to broker an equitable or fair partnership. What are couples’ perceptions of their roles in the division of labor in the home? How do spouses coordinate and enact different patterns of household labor? How do family systems operate to sustain particular distributions of labor?
