Children as early as preschool age discern the unequal household labor dynamics in their families and view it as fair, even across different cultures, according to findings from a recent study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Dr. Allegra Midgette
The recently published study examined households from both China and the U.S. to gauge potential differences given the countries’ different cultural, socio-political, and economic contexts and gender equality rankings. In both cultures, women do the majority of household work despite having relatively high labor market involvement, according to the study.
"We tend to focus on adults. A lot of the work on household labor is focusing on the consequences of this labor, particularly on women,” said study co-author Dr. Allegra J. Midgette, an assistant professor in Texas A&M University’s department of psychological and brain sciences. “Tends to be women who are doing this across cultures, across social-economic statuses, across time.”
Researchers for the study interviewed 215 three to 10-year-old children – 106 located in China and 109 in the U.S. – and their caregivers – 187 mothers, 27 fathers, and 1 gender not reported – about which parent did more of the household tasks, with the scope of the study only looking at children from opposite-sex two-parent families.
Adult respondents from both cultures reported that the mothers performed most of the household labor, and the same was found for the child respondents as well.
The interviewees were also asked whether they thought such labor distributions were fair. Adults reported it as fair, normalizing the inequality, with those from the U.S. more likely to report it as so.
“Qualitative responses suggested that this may reflect a cultural difference in applying fairness norms to family considerations (with Chinese parents being more hesitant to do so),” the study noted.
