Life Course Transitions and Housework: Marriage, Parenthood, and Time on Housework

We examine the effects of transitions in marital and parenthood status on 1,091 men’s and women’s housework hours using two waves of data from an Australian panel survey titled Negotiating the Life Course. We examine tran-sitions between cohabitation and marriage, and from cohabitation or marriage to separation, as well as transitions to first and higher-order births. We find extraordinary stability in men’s housework time across most transitions but considerable change for women in relation to transitions in parenthood. Our results suggest that the transition to parenthood is a critical moment in the development of an unequal gap in time spent on routine household labor. Time spent on household labor is not static across the life course. Although previous research sug-gests men’s and women’s time on housework varies at different life course stages, we know lit-tle about how transitions between life course stages affect housework time. There is good rea-son to examine this issue closely. Over the last few decades Australia has experienced major changes in life course patterns. Men and women are marrying later, having fewer children, sepa-rating more often, and spending more time in co-habiting relationships (De Vaus, 2004). The percentage of couples in Australia who are co-habiting at any one point in time has doubled between 1986 and 2003 from just below 6 % t