Investigating Gender Differences in the Meaning of Household Chores and Child Care

This study examines factors related to the affective meanings (evaluation, potency, and activity) that spouses and cohabitors (N = 309) attach to child care, baby care, and 9 household chores. Gender is related to about a third of these task meanings. Consistent with the feminine care hypothesis, women consider baby care and laundry especially good, potent, and active and consider meal preparation particularly powerful, although contrary to this hypothesis women evaluate washing dishes less positively than men. Consistent with the masculine care hypothesis, men consider auto work and yard work especially good and powerful. When paid and unpaid work patterns are controlled, however, 9 of the 12 gender differences become nonsignificant and 4 new gender differences are identified, suggesting that work patterns both mediate and suppress some gender differences in task meanings. Gender also moderates the relationship between work and 12 task meanings. In several of these equations, women's proportion of nonmasculine work is negatively related to the goodness or the power they associate with a nonmasculine task. Key Words: affective meaning, feminine tasks, gender, housework divisions, masculine tasks, task meanings. The performance of domestic labor can be an expression of love and affection, but it can also feel unpleasant and burdensome; it can be a source of power, but it can also convey weakness (DeVault, 1991; Ferree, 1990; Komter, 1989; Thompson, 1993). Similarly, the work of caring for one's children can be a symbol of affection and power, but it can also represent powerlessness in the marital relationship (Boulton, 1983; Dressel & Clark, 1990; Kranichfeld, 1987). The range of positive and powerful (love, care, concern) and negative and weak (subordination, powerlessness) meanings associated with family work has been documented in several qualitative studies (e.g., DeVault; Dressel & Clark; Fassinger, 1993; Hays, 1996; Hochschild, 1989; McMahon, 1995; Walzer, 1998). Despite this growing literature, however, several questions remain. First, the meanings attached to many domestic chores, particularly those performed primarily by men, have not been examined. Second, no study has investigated the factors that mediate, suppress, and moderate the relationship between gender and task meanings for the full range of domestic chores. Instead, most studies of housework meanings have been indepth, qualitative studies of a few, traditionally feminine chores (e.g., DeVault; Hays; McMahon). This study is designed to begin addressing these issues. I examine the affective meanings (evaluation, potency, and activity) that married and cohabiting women and men attach to child care, baby care, and nine domestic tasks. I also investigate gender differences in those meanings, work patterns that mediate and suppress those gender differences, and the moderating effect of gender on the relationship between work patterns and task meanings. I operationalize meaning using the three pancultural dimensions of meaning identified by Osgood, May, and Miron (1975) in their research in 23 different cultures and identified in a number of other studies (Heise, 1970): evaluation, potency, and activity. These are also the dimensions of meaning used for over two decades in affect control theory research (e.g., Heise, 1979; MacKinnon, 1994). The evaluation dimension gauges approval or disapproval and is a function of judgments about aesthetics (beautiful vs. ugly), hedonism (pleasant vs. unpleasant), utility (useful vs. useless), and morality (good vs. bad); potency reflects strength (strong vs. weak), size (big vs. little), or power (powerful vs. powerless); and activity reflects perceptual stimulation (noisy vs. quiet), speed (fast vs. slow), or age (young vs. old; Heise, 1992). This operationalization of task meaning has at least two advantages. First, cross-cultural research has shown that social concepts (e.g., identities, behaviors) universally evoke affective responses along these three dimensions (Osgood et al. …