title: Apron strings of working mothers: Maternal employment and housework in cross-national perspective.
abstract: This paper asks whether maternal employment has a lasting influence on the division of household labor for married women and men. Employing multi-level models with 2002 ISSP survey data for 31 countries, we test the lagged accommodation hypothesis that a long societal history of maternal employment contributes to more egalitarian household arrangements. Our results find that living in a country with a legacy of high maternal employment is positively associated with housework task-sharing, even controlling for the personal socialization experience of growing up with a mother who worked for pay. In formerly socialist countries, however, there is less gender parity in housework than predicted by the high historical level of maternal employment.
authors.affiliation: Department of Sociology, SSPA 3151, School of Social Sciences, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697-5100, USA.
authors.forename: Judith
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Treas
authors.forename: Tsui-O
authors.initials: TO
authors.lastname: Tai