If you’ve been following FHSS‘s blog for long, you’ve seen our posts about sociology professor Dr. Renata Forste and her research on the gendered division of housework. She gave the 2016 Cutler Lecture on this subject, her area of expertise. More and more women are joining the workforce (accounting for 46.8% of the U.S. labor force), which means that families are evolving to share responsibilities between parents. During her Cutler Lecture, Dr. Forste cited Arlie Hochschild’s book The Second Shift, which suggests that men who do housework…
- have a strong male identity.
- have a more holistic, nuanced notion of their role as fathers.
- have wives who facilitate their involvement in household chores.
- don’t work late hours at the office.
- have learned not to view housework as women’s work.
- have happier family lives.
And the media is catching up too. Marketers are beginning to target men in advertisements for cleaning products, Dr. Forste said, and today’s men “have a more elaborate notion of fathering than previous generations.”
Dr. Forste’s full lecture is available here.
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