Housework time from middle childhood through adolescence: Links to parental work hours and youth adjustment.

Abstract

The developmental course, family correlates, and adjustment implications of youth housework participation from age 8–18 were examined. Mothers, fathers, and two siblings from 201 European American families provided questionnaire and/or daily diary data on six occasions across 7 years. Multilevel modeling within an accelerated longitudinal design revealed that girls spent more time on housework than did boys but that housework time of both girls and boys increased from middle childhood to mid-adolescence and leveled off thereafter. In years when mothers were employed for more hours than usual, girls, but not boys, spent more time on housework than usual. Housework time was linked to more depressive symptoms (at a between-person level) and predicted lower school grades (at a within-person level) for youth with low familism values. Housework time also predicted more depressive symptoms (at a within-person level) for youth with high parent-youth conflict about housework. Findings highlight the gendered nature of housework allocation and the importance of considering both individual and contextual factors when examining youth daily activities.

Over-time Fluctuations in Parenting and Adolescent Adaptation Within Families: A Systematic Review

“…Moreover, regarding academic functioning, three micro-longitudinal studies suggested that adolescents reported more academic problems on days with poorer parent-child interaction (Bai et al 2017;Lehman and Repetti 2007;Timmons and Margolin 2015), and an increase in academic problems was related to poorer parent-child interaction the next day, but not vice versa (Timmons and Margolin 2015). However, a macrolongitudinal study on school performance (i.e., grades) did not find significant concurrent associations with academic functioning (Lam et al 2016). Hence, so far, there is some preliminary evidence that academic problems might be related to negative parent-child interaction on a micro timescale, but insufficient evidence is available with respect to the macro timescale.…”

“…Several datasets were identified that were used in multiple studies: the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (Chung et al 2009;Coley et al 2009;Coley et al 2008), the Pittsburgh Youth Study (Besemer et al 2016;Farrington et al 2002;Rekker et al 2015), the Research on Adolescent Development and Relationships Rekker et al 2017), the Study of Peers, Activities and Neighborhoods (Janssen et al 2018;Janssen et al 2014;Janssen et al 2016;Janssen et al 2017;Svensson et al 2017), and The Work, Family, Health Network Study (Lippold et al 2016a, b). Moreover, based on authors and sample characteristics, two unnamed datasets were identified that were assessed in multiple studies, a daily diary dataset (Bai et al 2017;Kuhlman et al 2016;) and macro timescale study (Lam et al 2016;Lam and McHale 2015).…”

“…Total number between brackets is number of unique samples results. Overall, the results of most studies suggested that poorer parent-child interactions were concurrently linked to more internalizing problems, such as depressive symptoms, lower self-esteem, and emotional eating (Han and Grogan-Kaylor 2013;Lam et al 2016;Lehman and Repetti 2007;Shanahan et al 2008;Vandewalle et al 2017;. Nonetheless, also some nonsignificant concurrent links were found between parental hostility and self-esteem (Han and Gorgan-Kaylor 2013), and parent-child conflict about homework and depressive symptoms (Lam et al 2016).…”

Work and Family in the Second Decade of the 21st Century

“…Nonetheless, women—employed or not, working part‐time or full‐time, night shift or day shift—continue to do significantly more than employed men, especially the tasks researchers label “feminine,” which are the time‐consuming, routine tasks such as cooking and cleaning and the mental labor of planning and managing (Blair‐Loy, Hochschild, Pugh, Williams, & Hartmann, ; Daminger, ; Offer, ). This gendered distribution of labor starts early with young children, with daughters doing more housework than sons (Lam, Greene, & McHale, ). This inequality harms women—whether through costs to relationship satisfaction, intimacy (Carlson, Hanson, & Fitzroy, ), sexual satisfaction (Barrett & Raphael, ) or, as we show below, through the loss of money and time.…”

Cultural Underpinnings of Gender Development: Studying Gender Among Children of Immigrants

“…In middle childhood, this socialization takes the form of household and play roles. During this time period, girls have been found to be assigned greater household chores than boys (Lam, Greene, & McHale, ). When boys are assigned household tasks, they are gender‐typical (e.g., outdoor tasks, physical labor; Etaugh & Liss, ).…”