Introduction

Chapter 4 presented the five classes: Ultra-Traditional, Traditional, Transitional Husbands, Egalitarian, and Egalitarian High Workload. To summarize briefly, Ultra-Traditional couples are characterized by a highly gendered division of labor, with wives spending substantial time on traditionally feminine tasks (but also the most time on masculine tasks as well). Traditional couples similarly perform housework using a gendered division of tasks but do not perform as much housework overall as do the Ultra-Traditional couples; as noted in Chapter 4, they are the largest class in our sample. Couples in the Transitional Husbands class reflect housework participation for both wives and husbands as generally in the middle of the distributions on tasks for the entire sample. Egalitarian couples have an almost equal split of housework time, with the gaps for both feminine and masculine tasks substantially smaller than in other classes. Finally, the Egalitarian High Workload couples are comprised of couples where husbands perform more housework than do wives and where both spouses spend approximately the same amount of time on feminine tasks.

In this chapter, we describe the classes by the key characteristics of the couples who comprise them. We begin by focusing on characteristics that are typically considered measures of the theoretical frameworks explaining the division of labor that were described in Chapters 1 and 2. We then compare the five classes based upon both couple and spousal demographic characteristics. After presenting the best fitting statistical model predicting class membership, the chapter concludes with our overall summaries of the five classes.

Time availability

As noted in Chapters 1 and 2, this theoretical framework focuses on a simple economic perspective: individuals with less time available will do less housework and individuals with more time available will do more housework. Thus, the more time spent in the labor market, the less time an individual has to perform household labor.

As we can see from Table 5.1, there are substantial and statistically significant differences in work hours for both women and men across the five classes. Both women and men work the most hours in the Transitional Husbands class (and the total paid work hours for women and men combined is highest in this class). Statistically, however, the men in the Ultra-Traditional, Traditional, and Transitional Husbands classes have indistinguishable working hours.