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A long-standing debate questions whether homemakers or working wives are happier. Drawing on cross-national data for 28 countries, this research uses multi-level models to provide fresh evidence on this controversy. All things considered, homemakers are slightly happier than wives who work fulltime, but they have no advantage over part-time workers. The work status gap in happiness persists even controlling for family life mediators. Cross-level interactions between work status and macro-level variables suggest that country characteristics—GDP, social spending, women's labor force participation, liberal gender ideology and public child care—ameliorate the disadvantage in happiness for full-time working wives compared to homemakers and part-time workers.

Although some studies have revealed a generational conflict over childrearing, few quantitative empirical studies have examined whether the care provided by grandparents affects the parenting practices of their adult sons and daughters. Using data from the Panel Survey of Family Dynamics (PSFD), this study investigates the effect of grandparents’ caregiving on the parenting practices of their adult children in Taiwan. Our results show that the care assistance provided by grandparents significantly affects both fathers’ and mothers’ childrearing practices. All else being equal, when their own parents provide more than 20 days of care per month, fathers and mothers are both more likely to be highly authoritative. Interestingly, the care assistance from parents-in-law only significantly leads to mothers’ more likely to show authoritative but also some permissive practices. The findings suggest that, while grandparents are an important source of care help, the differences in child-rearing practices between generations might entail inconsistent parenting practices. Our results also suggest the differential effect of care from paternal and maternal grandparents on mothers might be linked to different experiences of authority structures between men and women.

The researchers aim is to develop knowledge about the experiences of different union types by investigating relationship satisfaction of people in LAT, cohabiting, and marital relationships. They differentiate those with intentions to marry for cohabiters, and those with intentions to marry or live together in LAT relationships. Using data from Wave 1 of the Generations and Gender Survey in France, Germany, Australia, and Russia, OLS regressions are estimated to investigate the differences in relationship satisfaction across relationship types, and across countries. Married people have the highest levels of relationship satisfaction. People in non-marital unions with intentions to marry or live together are significantly more satisfied than those without marriage or cohabitation intentions. Those in LAT relationships with no intentions to live together have the lowest levels of relationship satisfaction. There is evidence of cross-national variation with differences in relationship satisfaction by union type most pronounced in Australia and Russia. Gender differences are found with women reporting lower levels of relationship satisfaction than men.

This paper examines participation in female-typed household tasks by husbands in 32 countries in the 2002 International Social Survey Program. Mokken scaling shows widespread and systematic ordering of married men's performance of stereotypically female tasks, a hierarchy which is obscured by conventional measures of couples' task-sharing. The hierarchy gives rise to a typology of men's conformity to the social conventions of this task hierarchy. Multilevel, multinomial models test hypotheses on the micro-level predictors of husbands' pattern of housework paticipation, as well as expectations for country differences.

This paper proposes a new index of mothers’ well-being for cross-country comparison. Conceptually, maternal health and the social protection and autonomy of mothers are two distinct dimensions at issue. In operationalization, maternal health is indicated by 1) prevalence of modern contraception, 2) low adolescent fertility; and 3) low maternal mortality. Social protection and autonomy of the mothers comprises (1) skilled attendants at delivery; (2) age at first marriage; and (3) maternal protection policy. The results from structural equation modeling show that a one-factor model is as good as a two-factor model for constructing the Mothers’ Well-being Index (MWI). The MWI’s internal validity and predictive validity are both satisfactory. We calculated the scores for each country and present the ranking of 150 countries for 2010. The mothers in Nordic and Western European countries fared best, and mothers from African countries fared worst. Countries located in the middle of the ranking list should be given more attention because their relative ranking can be contingent on the choice of measures in index construction.

This chapter reviews the main theoretical perspectives and key recent empirical research on the gender division of housework. We focus on unpaid housework, but where relevant also consider childcare. The chapter starts with an overview of research on time use in households and examines variation in domestic work time in relation to individual and household characteristics and across countries. We then review the main theoretical arguments advanced to explain the continuing gender division of household labor focusing on recent developments and debates. Finally we examine the consequences of gender divisions in household labor for wellbeing focusing on time pressure, work-family conflict and general happiness using data from the International Social Survey Program. Our empirical findings show that women continue to spend more time on housework than men and have a larger share of routine housework. In addition, housework time increases perceived time pressure and work-family conflict and decreases women’s happiness.