Parents’ Division of Housework and Mothers’ Labor Force Participation: Result of Selection and Assortative Mating?

• In Event: 2266 - Family Section Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 9. Gender Division Labor and Women's Career Interruption

Abstract

What factors determine the extent to which a mother participates in the labor force? While past research suggests that for heterosexual couples, the male partner’s involvement in housework and child care is positively associated with a mother’s labor force participation, this research does not take into account selection effects that might jointly determine a partner’s behavior and mothers’ labor force participation. If such selection criteria are not accounted for, the relationship between the division of labor in the household and a woman’s labor force participation might be spurious, as the division of labor could (in part or completely) be the result of assortative mating and expectations, and not the cause for a woman’s labor force participation. Relying on data from nine waves of the German Family Panel, the present study re-examines the relationship between couples’ division of housework and child care and mothers’ labor force participation. Importantly, this study accounts for mothers’ career aspirations and gender role attitudes as well as other, time-stable characteristics that may determine both women’s selection into specific partnerships and their labor force participation. The results suggest that a partner’s involvement in housework and child care are indeed driven by selection—both are positively associated with mothers’ working hours in random-effects models, but the effect disappears once selection factors are accounted for in fixed-effects models.

Author

• Julia Ingenfeld, University of Toronto