When wives get sick - Gender role attitudes, marital happiness, and husbands' contribution to household labor

This article examines factors related to husbands' contribution to housework when their wives become newly impaired. Data are from a sample of 319 married couples who participated in the National Survey of Families and Households, and in which wives developed physical limitations between baseline and five-year,follow-up interviews. Using ordinary least squares regression. we found that husbands who have egalitarian attitudes toward marital roles and are happy in their marriage at baseline do more housework at follow-up than husbands who are traditional and/or are less happy. Given the slow rate of change in household division of labor the lack of public policies to support people with impairment and family caregiving disproportionately burdens women.