Institutions, contracts, and housework: The division of household labor in marriage, remarriage, and cohabitation

Most theoretical and empirical research on housework focuses exclusively on married couples, while housework patterns in remarriage and cohabitation are understudied. This dissertation attempts to address this gap in the literature by asking how housework hours, housework task segregation, and perceptions of housework inequity differ among married, remarried, and cohabiting couples. Theoretically, I argue that the implicit contracts, i.e. the informal, often unacknowledged, understandings that structure relationship experiences, will differ across the three relationship types. These contracts consist of three dimensions—institutionalization, investment, and organizational principles or norms—that are expected to shape how couples negotiate and perceive the division of household labor. In terms of institutionalization, I find that the incomplete institutionalization of remarriage and cohabitation does not lead to a more equitable division of household labor, primarily because gendered expectations of women's responsibility for housework are entrenched in each of the three relationship types. Relationship investment has the strongest effect on women's housework time, with cohabiting women's low investment contributing to reduced housework hours. Finally, evidence for more egalitarian organizational principles in remarriage is absent, while for cohabitation the evidence is mixed. Cohabiting women do spend less time on housework than married women, and cohabitors have less gender segregated housework patterns, so men and women in cohabitation are more likely to be spending their time on similar tasks. However, cohabiting men do not perform more housework than married men, and cohabitors are not more likely to perceive an unequal division of household labor as unfair. As a whole, this research suggests that family scholars should reconsider the conventional wisdom that cohabitation and remarriage offer a substantial challenge to traditional gender inequalities in families.