Young adults' gendered trajectories of routine housework time when leaving home

Abstract

Objective

To examine young adult women's and men's time use for routine housework when moving out of the parental household.

Background

From a life-course perspective, establishing an own household is one of the key markers of the transition to adulthood. Leaving home is associated with new responsibilities concerning the organization of everyday life, including routine housework, and provides a new context for gendered behavior.

Methods

Hours for routine housework were estimated with longitudinal fixed effects regression models, using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (1991–2020) on 911 women and 721 men, aged 18–32, who moved to an own couple or non-couple household.

Results

During the transition to an own household, young adult women increased their time for routine housework by 18 min per day. Young adult men's increase was larger with 21 min per day. The gender gap in routine housework hours widened when young adults moved into couple households but showed a converging pattern when they moved into non-couple households.

Conclusion

Women continue to do more routine housework than men in early adulthood, although moving into non-couple settings tends to decrease gender inequality on average.