An ethnographic study of eight dual-career families: their responsibility for and performance and negotiation of household and childcare tasks

• Main Author: Ventre, Mary Tibbals
• Other Authors: Family and Child Development
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University 2017
• Subjects: LD5655.V856 1988.V467; Married people > Employment; Households
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10919/77752

This qualitative study documented how household and child care task-sharing in eight dual-career families is allocated and negotiated. There were two specific aspects of shared tasks: responsibility for tasks as well as performance of tasks. Flexibility of spouses· employment as it affects task sharing was an important variable. used ethnographic methods to analyze the data from four interviews and two participant observations with each family. Findings described the balance of task sharing in the families: two families shared the total family workload equally; five families strive to share the total workload but fall just short of that goal; and in one family the wife is the primary household and child care worker; the husband helps her. Standards for household and child care tasks are very similar for each set of spouses; differences lead to task negotiation. I present the spouses’ strategies for negotiating household tasks. The findings also include spouses’ career commitment, influences on spouses’ task sharing and the importance of flexibility of employment for dual-career family life. In seven of the eight dual-career families, whose wives earned 40% of more of family income, sharing of household and child care tasks was very high: in these families, the husbands performed at least half of the household and child care tasks. Task responsibility if shared equally in only one family; wives remain the family executives. Career commitment was strong in all but two spouses: these two were considering quitting work at some time to take care of children. The two families who share the total family workload equally use more cooperative negotiation strategies than the other families use. The spouse who has the most flexible employment performs more household and child care tasks than the other spouse does. Note: All names of informants are fictitious. Some facts about the families have been changed to protect their identities. === Ph. D.