Exit, Voice, and Suffering: Do Couples Adapt to Changing Employment Patterns?

What is the long-term effect of the emerging predominance of the dual-earner family? This study uses data from 3 national household panel surveys-the British Household Panel Survey (N = 16,044), the German Socioeconomic Panel (N = 14,164) and the U.S. Panel Study of Income Dynamics (N = 7,423)-which provide, for the first time, clear and direct longitudinal evidence of change in the balance of domestic labor within couples: evidence that women make large adjustments in their domestic work time immediately upon entering full-time paid work and that men exhibit a less obvious pattern of lagged adaptation, showing larger increases in domestic work in successive years. Key Words: employment, gender, housework. Advanced societies all face a similar issue. The two-earner family has become the predominant form: Has this led to a reallocation of domestic work responsibilities? Some assume a smooth progress to gender equality in work burdens. It might be expected that women's growing earnings will gradually increase their domestic bargaining power, and this in turn will ultimately compel men to share equally in child care and housework (Bittman, England, Sayer, Folbre, & Matheson, 2003). Others argue that inequality will persist and that social processes constrain change (Brines, 1994; Greenstein, 2000). Structuralists believe that these gender divisions reflect institutionalized gender norms (Acker, 1988; Blumberg, 1991; Delphy & Leonard, 1986). Constructionists argue that the enactment of the gendered division of labor is a crucial element in the creation of "the deepest sense of what one is-one's gender identity" (Goffman, 1977, p. 315; see also Berk, 1985; West & Zimmerman, 1987). The evidence seems to support the arguments for the persistence of gender inequality. All the available studies identify the dual-burden phenomenon: Even full-time employed women still bear a disproportionate responsibility for housework and child care (e.g., Bianchi, Milkie, Sayer, & Robinson, 2000). We propose an alternative position, however, consistent with aspects of all the previously outlined views. We focus on the process of change over time. Individuals act within a social context that they inherit. This inheritance will inhibit, in the short term, achievement of the fair reallocation of domestic tasks that should follow from the rapid emergence of women into the paid labor market. Nevertheless, we argue, over the longer term, women who carry the dual burden have choices: they can (a) suffer (i.e., tolerate) things as they are, (b) leave the labor market, (c) leave their husbands, or (d) seek to renegotiate the domestic division of labor. The first of these creates an unresolved tension toward change. The other alternatives directly reduce the dual burden in various ways: the second by removing the paid work, the third (divorce) removes the couple from the dual-burden statistics altogether, and the fourth (renegotiation), as we shall see, leads to some redistribution. The consequence is lagged adaptation in which the inhibiting effects of the inherited norms and identities on change are gradually reduced (Bittman & Pixley, 1997; Gershuny, Godwin, & Jones, 1994). In support of this argument, we use true longitudinal panel data (from the United States, United Kingdom, and Germany), tracking the same individuals over time, to demonstrate that adaptation does indeed occur. THEORY In seeking to explain women's specialization in domestic work, economists often rely on the assumption that individuals in households make choices among alternative mixes of employment and domestic work. Obviously, spouses have different endowments, have different stocks of human capital, and hence face different wage rates, so there is no reason to assume that men and women should each allocate the same amount of time to paid and unpaid work. Nevertheless, if one partner (e.g., the wife) moves from nonemployment into employment, we would expect, all things being equal, the division of domestic responsibilities to adjust accordingly-to adapt. …