Housework, babies and divorce: does domestic fairness promote second births and/or relationship survival?
Lyn Craig and Pooja Sawrikar
Social Policy Research Centre, UNSW
Contact Email:   lcraigunsw.edu.au

Meeting the competing claims of work and family is difficult and demanding, particularly for mothers. Despite the large-scale entry of women into the paid workforce, there has been little corresponding movement by men into domestic labour, and it continues to be women who most often adjust their work commitments around family, or most suffer the time stress concomitant with managing both roles. Social and workplace policies rarely address the division of domestic labour, which is widely regarded as a private matter. However, domestic inequity may have practical implications including upon the survival of marital relationships and fertility outcomes, which have pervasive social effects. Using logistic regression analysis of data from Waves 1-4 of the Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA), this paper investigates i) whether inequality in the division of domestic labour diminishes the likelihood couples will have a second child, and ii) whether perceived or actual inequity in the division of household labour contributes to the likelihood of divorce.

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