Work in the Family and in the Labor Market: A Cross-National, Reciprocal Analysis

Abstract

The interrelationships by sex between domestic work and labor market work in the United States, Canada, Norway, and Sweden are examined in this analysis, which seeks to overcome limitations of past research on the family division of labor and labor market employment: studies of one type of work generally ignore the impact of the other, are usually restricted to one country, and sometimes limit the analysis to only one sex. Findings indicate that hours of labor market employment negatively affect the U.S. women's percentage of household tasks. Moreover, relative involvement in domestic labor negatively affects hours employed for women in Norway and Sweden (but not in the U.S.), which suggests that Scandinavian women use their greater opportunities for part-time employment as a way of reconciling family and labor market responsibilities. No significant reciprocal effects are observed for men in any of the four countries