Spouses' balancing of housework and leisure activities at home may affect their recovery from work. This paper reports on a study of everyday family life in which 30 dual-earner couples were tracked around their homes by researchers who recorded their locations and activities every 10 min. For women, the most frequently pursued activities at home were housework, communication, and leisure; husbands spent the most time in leisure activities, followed by communication and housework. Spouses differed in their total time at home and their proportion of time devoted to leisure and housework activities, with wives observed more often in housework and husbands observed more often in leisure activities. Both wives and husbands who devoted more time to housework had higher levels of evening cortisol and weaker afternoon-to-evening recovery. For wives, husbands' increased housework time also predicted stronger evening cortisol recovery. When both spouses' activities were entered in the same model, leisure predicted husbands' evening cortisol, such that husbands who apportioned more time to leisure, and whose wives apportioned less time to leisure, showed stronger after-work recovery. These results suggest that the division of labor within couples may have implications for physical health.

Everyday patterns of interaction can strengthen or undermine bonds between family members. This naturalistic observation study focused on an understudied facet of family life: opportunities for interaction among dual-earner family members after work and family members' responses to these opportunities. Thirty dual-earner couples and their children were observed and video-recorded in their homes throughout two weekday afternoons and evenings. Two interaction opportunities were analyzed: (1) the behavior of family members toward a parent returning home from work and (2) the physical proximity of family members throughout the evening. Three main findings emerged. Women, who tended to return home before men, were greeted with positive behavior and reports of the day's information from family members. Men, in contrast, returned home later in the day and received positive behavior or no acknowledgment from family members distracted by other activities. Throughout the evening, mothers spent more time with children whereas fathers spent more time alone. Couples were seldom together without their children. The implications of observed interaction patterns and the contribution of naturalistic observation methods to the study of family relationships are discussed.

This ethnographic study investigates children's contributions to household work through the analysis of interview data and scan sampling data collected among 30 middle‐class dual‐earner families in Los Angeles, California. We discuss convergences and divergences between data collected with two independent methodologies: scan sampling and interviewing. Scan sampling data provide an overview of the frequency of children's participation in household work as well as the types of tasks they engaged in during data collection. Children's interview responses reflect their perceptions of their responsibilities, how they view family expectations regarding their participation in household work, and whether allowance is an effective motivator. Comparative analysis reveals that most children in our study spend surprisingly little time helping around the house and engage in fewer tasks than what they report in interviews. Within the context of children's minimal participation in household work, we find that allowance is not an effective motivator, but that children in families with access to paid domestic help tend to be less helpful than children in families without. We suggest that while most children are aware that their working parents need help, in some families, inconsistent and unclear expectations from parents negatively affect children's participation in household work.

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