Young Adults' Expectations of the Division of Labor in their Future Families

• In Event: 2258 - The Policy Consequences of Work-Family Myths

Abstract

Married couples continue to grapple with how best to allocate work and family responsibilities. Prior research focuses on structural barriers to implementing desired work and family arrangements and the increasing acceptability of unconventional arrangements. Instead, we used data from the Monitoring the Future surveys (1976 – 2014) to examine trends in young people’s attitudes about the division of labor in their future families. Preferred divisions of labor are increasingly important to understand as institutional mechanisms of family life have weakened and beliefs about gender continue to contribute to gender inequality. For all youth, the male breadwinner/female homemaker was still the most desired division of labor, but all other division of labor arrangements increased in acceptability and desirability over time. While these findings suggest a redefinition of marriage to incorporate gender flexible divisions of labor, the men-as-breadwinner role remained intact. Findings suggest within-gender differences, primarily by race, were more important than between-gender differences.

Authors

• Joanna Pepin, University of Maryland

• Brittany N. Dernberger, University of Maryland-College Park