Men’s One-Person Household Experience and Gender Role Attitude

• In Event: 3520 - Section on Race, Gender, and Class Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 5. Family and Religion

Abstract

A growing body of research is focusing on the effect of one-person household, measuring the social outcomes of this new structure of household. Understanding the outcome of one-person household is important for the society not only because of the rapidly increasing number, but also because it may be an outcome of the patrilocal culture of South Korea, where women have voluntarily started to defer from forming families. However, most prior research focuses on defining the impacts of one-person household, not looking at the social outcomes of one-person households. Therefore, I examine the association of one-person household experience, focusing on men’s experience in the household structure in association with gender role. The Korean Labor & Income Panel Study is used in this article to examine six different variables of gender role attitude and, the outcomes of experiencing one-person households on gender-role attitudes. My results show that men’s experience in one-person household has a positive association with men’s gender role attitude, implying that men who experience performing household chores traditionally done by women tend to have more egalitarian views towards gender roles. The findings suggest that further research should be conducted on whether experience of one-person household changes men’s behaviors regarding gender roles.

Author

• JaYung Moon, Yonsei University