Household Labor and the Routine Production of Gender

Abstract

This paper explores how twenty dual-earner couples with school-aged children talk about sharing child care and housework. In about half of the families, fathers are described as performing many tasks traditionally performed by mothers, but remaining in a helper role. In the other families, fathers are described as assuming equal responsibility for domestic chores. With reference to the parents' accounts of the planning, allocation, and performance of household labor, I investigate the social conditions and interactional processes that facilitate equal sharing. I describe how the routine practice of sharing child care and an ongoing marital conversation socialize the parents and help them to construct an image of the father as a competent care giver. Drawing on West and Zimmerman's (1987) formulation of “doing gender,” I suggest that household labor provides the opportunity for expressing, confirming and sometimes transforming the meaning of gender.