Changes in Perceived Fairness of Division of Household Labor Across Parenthood Transitions: Whose Relationship Satisfaction Is Impacted?

Abstract

Using a nationally representative, prospective study of young German adults, we address two research questions: First, are changes in the perceptions of the fairness of (un)paid labor division associated with changes in men’s and women’s partnership satisfaction across fertility transitions? Second, is this association moderated by men and women’s pre-birth gender role attitudes? Our results indicate that differences between respondents in changes in relationship satisfaction after fertility transitions could be observed across perceptions of the fairness of the division of labor, rather than across differing actual divisions of household labor. That effect was found for women, but not men. Across gender role attitudes, the perception of a stable fair arrangement was detrimental to traditional men’s relationship satisfaction, whereas the perception of increased fairness protected against declines in relationship satisfaction only for egalitarian women. We discuss how the mismatch between imagined and lived realities might affect relationship dynamics across fertility transitions.

Keywords

dyadic relationship/quality/satisfaction fertility gender and family household labor intimate relationships

Introduction

“‘It is really difficult [between us]… you know, this sharing… [...] I didn’t know you could breakup because you fought over sharing duties, and I think this is our biggest threat.”

(Kasia, architect, 20 months after birth)” (Reimann, 2019, p. 193)

The study of how partners divide (un)paid labor has been the focus of numerous analyses, stemming from an interest in changing power dynamics within couples (e.g., Davis & Greenstein, 2013), in the impact of the division of labor on partners’ well-being (e.g., Kalmijn & Monden, 2012) and on the satisfaction with and stability of relationships (e.g., Oshio, Nozaki, & Kobayashi, 2013; Ruppanner, Brandén, & Turunen, 2018; Tang & Curran, 2013). One of the most consistent findings with respect to the division of labor is the fundamental impact which parenthood has on how individuals allocate responsibilities, with mothers experiencing a more pronounced increase in the share of housework than fathers (Katz-Wise, Priess, & Hyde, 2010; Yavorsky, Dush, & Schoppe-Sullivan, 2015).

Even otherwise egalitarian couples, who pre-parenthood declare the intention to share tasks equally, rarely meet those intentions post-birth (Bühlmann, Elcheroth, & Tettamanti, 2010; Grunow & Evertsson, 2019). This lack of correspondence between imagined and lived realities is not entirely due to an adjustment of partners’ desires after becoming parents: across national contexts, parents would prefer a more egalitarian division of labor than the one that they have (German Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizen, Women and Youth, 2017; Portegijs, Perez, & van den Brakel, 2018). Understandably, these findings raise the question what the mismatch means for partners’ assessment of their unions, especially in light of the possible negative repercussions of the transition to parenthood on well-being and relationship satisfaction (Keizer & Schenk, 2012; Nomaguchi & Milkie, 2020).

Though a lot of research has focused on what predicts the actual division of (un)paid labor and the repercussions of possible inequalities, clear attention has also been paid to the fact that it is the perceived fairness of such division that is particularly important for how the inequality is experienced emotionally (Coltrane, 2000). Interestingly, whereas some studies report that the perceived fairness of labor division predicts mothers’ but not fathers’ relationship satisfaction after the transition to parenthood (e.g., Chong & Mickelson, 2016; Grote & Clark, 2001; Ruppanner et al., 2018), others have shown that perceived fairness is equally important for men and women (e.g., Frisco & Williams, 2003).

Two points are important to make here. Foremost, there is clear evidence that not only is the perception of “fair division” context specific but also, that the impact of that perception on relationship satisfaction is stronger in more egalitarian countries (Greenstein, 2009; Hu & Yucel, 2018; Kornrich & Eger, 2016; Mencarini & Sironi, 2012). Second, we have seen indication that the way parenthood affects the division of labor is shifting across time. Parenthood is less of a traditionalizing force for couples’ labor allocation in recent cohorts (Preisner, Neuberger, Bertogg, & Schaub, 2020), reflecting changing norms and gender roles which can, in turn, have an impact on how the division of labor is experienced (Dribe, Stanfors, & Buehler, 2009). Thus, we contend that the effort to understand how perceptions of the division of labor impact relationships can benefit from continuous examination of how contemporary cohorts experience fertility transitions, as perceived unfairness could be particularly detrimental not only in settings where egalitarian division of labor is becoming more desirable but also to partners who place particularly high value to such equity.

We set out to answer the following research questions: First, are changes in the perceptions of the fairness of the division of labor associated with changes in men’s and women’s partnership satisfaction across fertility transitions? Second, is the association between changes in perceived fairness and relationship satisfaction moderated by men and women’s pre-birth gender role attitudes? We investigate these questions using a large, nationally representative, prospective study of German adults (Pairfam; Huinink, Brüderl, Nauck, & Walper, 2011). These data offer several clear advantages: Focal for our contribution to the literature is the fact that these data are prospective, thus allowing us to examine heterogeneity in the association between changes in perceived (un)fairness and relationship satisfaction across individuals’ pre-birth gender role attitudes. Importantly, we are also able to prospectively study changes in men’s and women’s fairness perceptions and relationship satisfaction across fertility transitions rather than having to rely on recall of the (desired) division (e.g., Shockley & Allen, 2018). Furthermore, many of the previous studies of perceived fairness and relationship satisfaction across parenthood transitions are based on participants typically recruited via hospitals or birthing classes (e.g., Adamsons, 2013; Chong & Mickelson, 2016; Newkirk, Perry-Jenkins, & Sayer, 2017) or have focused only on women’s or mothers’ experiences (e.g., Claffey & Mickelson, 2009; Dew & Wilcox, 2011; Greenstein, 1996). Finally, we present a study of the topic in a highly dynamic national context, namely, Germany. Whereas individual gender attitudes have become more progressive over successive German cohorts (Braun & Scott, 2009; Pampel, 2011), the implementation of policies which enable equal division of labor (such as easily accessible institutional childcare for young children) is lagging behind (German Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizen, Women and Youth, 2017). This means that the cohorts which we examine face a particularly clear lack of correspondence between individual aspirations about how labor should be allocated and what is actually feasible given institutional constraints. Our work thus gives a glimpse into how individuals perceive and experience the division of labor across childbearing transitions in a context which possibly embodies a significant tension between individual aspirations and macro-level structures.

Theoretical Background

The argument why social scientists need to be concerned with the study of the division of (household) labor has been eloquently made by a number of researchers (Coltrane, 2000; Lachance-Grzela & Bouchard, 2010). In addition to a preoccupation with studying the mechanisms which explain potential inequalities between partners, the interest has also been driven by the acknowledgment that pronounced disparities in the division of work can impact partners’ evaluation of their relationship and potentially even its stability (e.g., Bellani, Esping Andersen, & Pessin, 2018; Ruppanner et al., 2018; Tang & Curran, 2013). This association between the division of labor and relationship satisfaction becomes even more important to study as couples experience fertility transitions since those events trigger substantial shifts in how paid and unpaid labor is allocated within households, especially for mothers (e.g., Gjerdingen & Center, 2005; Katz-Wise et al., 2010; Yavorsky et al., 2015). Even in contexts where births can be planned, with partners discussing how they want to arrange care and paid work, the post-birth lived realities often diverge substantially from the original vision, which can have negative consequences for the quality of partnerships, as highlighted in the opening quote of this paper (Grunow & Evertsson, 2019).

The stream of literature which has examined the association between (household) labor and partnership satisfaction has increasingly focused on partners’ perception of the fairness of the division of labor, rather than just on potentially more objective measures of the relative amount of labor performed. Grounded in propositions put forward by equity theory (Adams, 1965; Carrell & Dittrich, 1978; Pritchard, 1969; Walster, Walster, & Berscheid, 1978) it is argued that what matters for the experience of partners it not the absolute magnitude of the contributions and responsibilities but rather, whether the situation is perceived as just (Gager & Hohmann-Marriott, 2006).

Equity Theory and Relationship Satisfaction

The study of the individual repercussions of being over- or under-benefitted in the context of social relationships did not initially focus on intimate relationships. Seminal (often experimental) work on this topic focused on interactions within non-intimate dyads and demonstrated that the experience of receiving more or less than what is perceived as equitable within social exchanges evokes feelings of injustice and distress and can result in ending the interaction (Adams, 1965; Carrell & Dittrich, 1978; Pritchard, 1969). Subsequent studies on how perceived inequality plays out within intimate dyads have demonstrated that the mechanism is also applicable to romantic relationships (Lively, Powell, Geist, & Steelman, 2008; Lively, Steelman, & Powell, 2010).

What is important to highlight here is that equity theory predicts that the experience of inequity not only impacts negatively the emotions of the under-benefitted party (i.e., who does more work than what (s)he perceives as fair) but also negatively impacts the relationship assessment of the over-benefitted partner (i.e., who perceives that labor division as unfair toward his or her partner). This may be because the latter might have feelings of guilt or shame (Guerrero, La Valley, & Farinelli, 2008; Kalmijn & Monden, 2012; Lively et al., 2010). In line with these theoretical arguments, we put forward the following two hypotheses:

Hypothesis 1

Rather than actual change in division of unpaid labor, it is the perceived fairness of the division of labor that is associated with changes in relationship satisfaction across fertility transitions.

Hypothesis 2

Compared to a stable fair arrangement, change toward perceived unfairness (toward over- or under-benefitting oneself) is associated with change toward lower relationship satisfaction.

The empirical evidence with respect to how perceived unfairness impacts partners is mixed, with some studies reporting that both partners are affected by the perception of unfair division (e.g., Frisco & Williams, 2003) while others reporting significant effects only for women’s relationship satisfaction and well-being (e.g., Chong & Mickelson, 2016; Grote & Clark, 2001). In our work, we examine the main effects of perceived unfairness on men’s and women’s relationship satisfaction but also argue that in order to understand the possible heterogeneity in how unfairness is experienced, we need to take into consideration individuals’ gender role attitudes prior to the observed fertility transitions.

Individual Gender Role Attitudes and Perceptions of Fairness

Though equity theory suggests that the perception of unfairness results in negative emotions irrespective of whether the individual is over- or under-benefitted within the social interaction, the distributive justice model indicates that the sense of fairness is impacted by the outcomes that people envisioned themselves receiving (Major, 1987; Thompson, 1991). In other words, it is important to recognize that the perception of (un)fairness might impact individuals differently because of the varying benchmarks that people have for how tasks “ought” to be distributed (Gager & Hohmann-Marriott, 2006). Greenstein (1996) argued that the comparison referents of women with different gender ideologies vary: while traditional women might base their expectations on what they perceive other women doing, egalitarian women might be basing their expectations on a vision of how egalitarian relationships are supposed to be organized and thus compare their own contribution to that of their male partner. Individuals with more traditional gender role attitudes might also be more likely to perceive their own under- or over-benefit in how labor division is divided as legitimate, whereas such perceptions might clearly defy the ideals which egalitarian individuals hold with respect to labor allocation (Blom, Kraaykamp, & Verbakel, 2017).

Interestingly, the empirical tests of these theoretical propositions have focused exclusively on the repercussions of actual division of labor for relationship satisfaction, rarely examining the crucial period of work reorganization following fertility transitions (Cheung & Kim, 2018; Qian & Sayer, 2016). In a study using cross-sectional data, Lavee and Katz (2002) demonstrate that inequality in actual division of tasks was negatively correlated to women’s marital satisfaction only for the ethnic-religious group of women in Israel with the most egalitarian gender ideologies (Lavee & Katz, 2002). Similar findings using cross-sectional data have been reported for egalitarian Taiwanese women (but not men; Qian & Sayer, 2016). In their work on number of hours of (un)paid labor, Blom and colleagues (2017) find that equality is more important for egalitarian than traditional men’s relationship satisfaction in Britain (though they do not find this conditional effect for women).

In a study which focused more explicitly on the transition to parenthood, Goldberg and Perry-Jenkins (2004) report that traditional women who were doing less of the caretaking than they expected prior to the birth of their child experienced higher levels of depression than egalitarian women in a similar situation. In our work, we build directly on this finding by using prospective data to capture how changes in perceived fairness in the division of labor, precipitated by the birth of a child, impact the relationship satisfaction of individuals with differing gender ideologies. Based on the theoretical propositions delineated earlier, we put forward the following hypothesis:

Hypothesis 3

Compared to the perception of a stable fair arrangement, change toward perceived unfairness (toward over- or under-benefitting oneself) will be more strongly associated with a decrease in relationship satisfaction for individuals who endorsed egalitarian gender role attitudes pre-birth.

Method

Data and Sample

We use data from 11 waves of the “Panel Analysis of Intimate Relationships and Family Dynamics” (Pairfam; Huinink et al., 2011; Nauck, Brüderl, Huinink, & Walper, 2012). The German Family Panel survey started in 2008 with a nationwide random sample from the population registers for three birth cohorts: 1971–1973, 1981–1983, and 1991–1993. In 2008, about 4000 interviews per cohort were realized, amounting to N = 12,402 interviews. Every year, a new panel wave is collected. Pairfam is the golden standard data source to study partnership dynamics and dissolution, fertility behavior and gender relations prospectively among contemporary German cohorts.

Respondents had to fulfill a number of criteria to be included in our analytical sample. First, respondents had to report a co-resident heterosexual relationship (married or cohabiting) that was intact at first interview or started during the observation period. Second, they had to be either childless or with not more than one common child at first observation and experienced the birth of a(nother) child during the observation period. Important to note here is that we carry out robustness analyses to check if our findings differ for those experiencing first versus higher parity transition. These two exclusion criteria reduced the number of eligible respondents for our sample drastically. Only a minority of the oldest age group (aged 35–37 when Pairfam started) were still childless or had one child when data collection started. The youngest birth cohort (aged 15–17 when Pairfam started) by contrast was less likely to report the transition to parenthood during the observation period. Third, respondents had to participate at least twice in the panel and their union had to remain intact for at least one wave after the birth of a(nother) child in order to obtain both a pre- and a post-birth measurement of our core variables. Finally, respondents needed to report valid responses to the questions regarding relationship satisfaction and perceived fairness of the division of (un)paid labor, as well as the control variables in our models. Our final analytical sample thus comprised N = 977 respondents, 46% men and 54% women.

Measures

Given our aim to study the impact of change in perceived fairness of the division of unpaid and paid work on the change in relationship satisfaction across fertility transitions, our research design required two time points for each individual. The pre-birth measures (t1) were obtained in the first wave in which respondents reported an intact co-resident heterosexual relationship. For the vast majority of our respondents (71%), this was in 2008, at the first wave of data collection. The post-birth measures (t2) were obtained in the wave in which respondents reported that since the last interview, a first (or second child) was born. For 95% of our sample, post-birth measures were obtained within the first year after that transition. The remaining 5% had skipped that panel wave and their post-birth measures were taken from the wave 1 year later. The median difference between pre- and post-birth measure was four waves, corresponding to roughly 4 years of the relationship. The distribution of the variables included in our models for the full samples of male and female respondents, respectively, as well as their stratification by parental status are presented in Table 1.

Table 1.

Descriptive results for n = 449 men and n = 528 women experiencing a first or second birth during the observation period. Percentages if not indicated otherwise.

	Full Sample		First Birth		Second Birth
	Men	Women	Men	Women	Men	Women
Relationship satisfaction
T1^a;M (SD)	8.34 (2.15)	8.48 (1.93)	8.37 (2.20)	8.58 (1.77)	8.29 (2.05)	8.34 (2.13)
T1 → T2^b
Increased	23.83	22.35	23.49	21.36	24.50	23.74
Stable	32.96	35.42	34.56	35.28	29.80	35.62
Decreased	43.21	42.23	41.95	43.37	45.70	40.64
Perceived fairness labor division
T1
Unfair	24.05	37.88	23.83	39.81	24.50	35.16
Fair	75.95	62.12	76.17	60.19	75.50	64.84
T1 → T2
More fair	14.48	19.32	15.44	22.01	12.58	15.53
Stable fair	60.36	47.16	60.07	45.95	60.93	48.86
Stable unfair	9.58	18.56	8.39	17.80	11.92	19.63
More unfair	15.59	14.96	16.11	14.24	14.57	15.98
Holds egalitarian gender role attitudes at T1	79.96	86.17	78.52	88.03	82.78	83.56
Control variables^c
Division housework labor
T1
Unequal	51.00	60.98	43.29	52.43	66.23	73.06
Equal	49.00	39.02	56.71	47.57	33.77	26.94
T1 → T2
More equal	8.02	8.52	9.06	9.71	5.96	6.85
Stable equal	19.38	12.12	22.48	13.59	13.25	10.05
Stable unequal	42.98	52.46	34.23	42.72	60.26	66.21
More unequal	29.62	26.89	34.23	33.98	20.53	16.89
Parenthood status
Childless	66.37	58.52	100.00	100.00	0.00	0.00
One child	33.63	41.48	0.00	0.00	100.00	100.00
Age of youngest child, T2 in months; M (SD)	6.96(6.79)	7.12 (10.5)	7.08(7.40)	7.32(12.84)	6.72(5.41)	6.83 (5.76)
Union duration in months; M (SD)	36.74(38.61)	45.39(39.95)	27.53(33.73)	33.84(34.23)	54.93(41.21)	94.96(46.48)
Education
Lower-level secondary school degree	16.70	9.85	13.42	6.47	23.18	14.61
Medium-level secondary school degree	33.41	30.30	34.23	28.48	31.79	32.88
Higher-level secondary school degree	49.89	59.85	52.35	65.05	45.03	52.51
Employment
Fulltime employed/self employed	77.73	41.86	75.84	59.87	81.46	16.44
Part time, marginally or occasionally employed	2.23	14.77	1.35	11.65	4.64	19.18
Maternity/parental leave	0.67	16.29	0.00	0.00	1.32	39.27
In education/out of employment	19.38	27.08	22.82	28.48	12.58	25.11
Region
West	69.04	69.51	69.80	73.79	67.55	63.47
East	30.96	30.49	30.20	26.21	32.45	36.53
Birth cohort
1991–1993	3.79	7.39	4.03	11.33	3.31	1.83
1981–1983	65.03	75.95	76.17	78.64	43.05	72.15
1971–1973	31.18	16.67	19.80	10.03	53.64	26.03
N	449	528	298	309	151	219

^a T1 = pre-birth measure.

^b T2 = post-birth measure.

^c All control variables measured pre-birth except age of youngest child.

Relationship satisfaction was our dependent variable of interest. Respondents were asked “Overall, how satisfied are you with your relationship?” with the request to answer on an 11-point Likert scale ranging from 0 “very dissatisfied” to 10 “very satisfied.” Subtracting the corresponding value on the Likert scale of t1 from t2, we obtained an individual relationship satisfaction change score. A value of 0 indicated no change, negative values indicated a decline in relationship satisfaction between t1 and t2, and positive values indicated an increase. Baseline relationship satisfaction (at t1) was included in our models as a continuous variable ranging from 0 to 10.

Perceived fairness in division of paid and unpaid work was measured by asking respondents “Looking at both housework and paid work: How fair is the division of labor between you and your partner?” with answer categories: 1 “I do much more than my fair share,” 2 “I do a bit more than my fair share,” 3 “I do about my fair share” 4 “I do a bit less than my fair share,” and 5 “I do much less than my fair share.” This measure allows us to capture participants’ overall evaluation of the fairness of the division of labor in the household (allowing for possible tradeoffs between paid and unpaid labor), rather than assessing just part of the whole picture.

We consider all values besides 3 (i.e., fair) as respondents perceiving the division of unpaid and paid labor in their partnership as either under- or over-benefitting one partner (i.e., unfair). Combining the reports from t1 and t2, we obtained a variable indicating the nature of change in perceived fairness. Taking a consistent report of “doing about my fair share” as the reference group (i.e., stable fair), we distinguish respondents who (1) report consistently an over- or under-benefit in terms of labor division (i.e., stable unfair); (2) report a fair division of labor in t1 and an unfair division in t2 (i.e., more unfair); and (3) who report unfair division at t1 but fair at t2 (i.e., more fair).

Gender role attitudes: Respondents were asked in every other wave how much they agreed with a number of statements regarding gender role attitudes. We considered a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.66 too low to warrant including all items as a scale. We therefore used one item that relates to the division of housework studied: “Men should participate in housework to the same extent as women,” with answer categories ranging from 1 “disagree completely” to 5 “agree completely.” Given the skewness of the distribution toward higher values, we dichotomized the variable and distinguished respondents who answered 4 “agree” or 5 “agree completely” as holding gender egalitarian attitudes in the sphere of housework division. Given our theoretical interest in grasping gender role attitudes prior to birth, we used data from the pre-birth wave. For n = 151 respondents (16% of our sample), t1 corresponded to waves 2, 4, 6, and 8 when these questions were not included per design. We thus used the value from the subsequent (pre-birth) wave.

Actual division of housework labor referred to washing, cooking and cleaning activities. Respondents were asked to report how they and their partner organize these activities of daily life. The answer categories were 1 “(almost) completely my partner” 2 “mostly my partner” 3 “split about 50/50,” 4 “for the most part, me” 5 “(almost) completely me,” and 6 “another person.” We consider values 3 and 6 as situations in which housework division is equal. We chose to code the cases when the task was outsourced as “equal” since in those cases, the outcome for the partners was equal (i.e., non-involvement). We collapsed all other values as they describe situations in which one partners’ housework load is higher than the others’, thus indicating that the couple’s division of housework is unequal. Combining the reports from t1 and t2, we obtained a variable indicating change in housework division (in)equality during the transition to a(nother) child. If the respondent reported a shift from an unequal to an equal division of housework, we considered couple’s housework division as becoming more equal. Accordingly, if the respondent reported a shift from an equal to an unequal division of housework, we classified the couple’s division of housework as becoming more unequal. Respondents who reported equal household workload between the partners consistently in t1 and t2 where categorized as stable equal (the reference category). We considered couple’s division of housework as stable unequal when the respondent reported an unequal division of housework at t1 and t2. Men and women most frequently reported a stable unequal division of housework before and after birth. This assessment was more pronounced among women (53%) versus men (43%).

Actual division of paid labor: It can be argued that just as we control for changes in actual division of household labor, we should also control for changes in actual division of paid labor. However, in the country context of our study, Germany, mothers and fathers tend to have very opposite levels of attachment to the labor market after childbirth. Indeed, in our sample, nearly 90% of women were not employed in the interview wave after the birth of their child, whereas the same proportion of men were employed. Given that women’s and men’s employment statuses prior to birth is less gender specific, variation in the types of changes that we observe for women versus men is too uniform across the sample (with the vast majority of women leaving the labor force at least temporarily and men staying attached to the labor market) to warrant the inclusion of a measure grasping different types of change observable from pre- to post-birth measurement. Therefore, we include respondents’ employment status prior to the birth. This status varies between individuals and—given the tendency for gender specialization upon birth—indicates, particularly for the female sample, the extent to which mothers tend to detach from paid work after childbirth, at least temporarily.

We distinguished respondents who are fulltime or self-employed from those, who are part time, marginally or occasionally employed, who are on maternity/parental leave (only applies to parents at t1) and finally, who were out of employment due to enrollment in education, unemployment or because of being a housewife/houseman. Also, prior to the fertility transition, fulltime and self-employment are more common among men versus women with greater gender differences for individuals experiencing a second birth in the observation period. More women than men are in less than fulltime employment with larger differences among mothers versus childless women at t1.

Parental status indicates whether respondents were childless or had experienced a first birth. The majority (62%) of our analytical sample was childless at t1. Including both transition to first and second child was partly a pragmatic choice to include a greater share of individuals as eligible for our analyses. The bivariate analyses revealed no differences in both groups regarding our main variables of interest with one exception. Vis à vis their childless counterparts, men and women who were parents at first observation reported more frequently an unequal division of housework prior to the birth of their second child and consequently less change in their housework division after the was born. We conducted robustness analyses on the childless sample at t1 to see whether excluding men and women who expand their family would change our conclusions from the analyses presented here. The associations reported here are virtually identical, increasing our confidence that the underlying mechanisms are similar—a finding worth reporting in itself.

Age of the youngest child at t2 indicated the time in months since the couple experienced the birth of the first, or second, child during the observation period. The post-birth measures were taken when—on average—the child was about 7 months old.

Union duration indicated the time in months since the couple lived together (either married or unmarried). The average relationship duration of individuals in our sample was 37 months for men and 42 months for women at first observation.

Educational attainment distinguishes respondents with a (1) higher-level secondary school degree (German: Abitur, the reference group) comprising more than half of our sample, from respondents with a (2) medium-level secondary school degree (German: Realschule) and a (3) lower-level secondary school degree (German: Hauptschule).

Region distinguishes respondents living in East Germany, the Former Democratic Republic of Germany (31%) from those living in West Germany (the reference group). We include this variable because demographic partnership and family behavior as well as gender role attitudes and practices tend to differ between both regions still 30 years after the country was reunified (Ebner, Kühhirt, & Lersch, 2020).

Cohort membership refers to the sample design of Pairfam and distinguishes respondents born between 1971–1973, 1981–1983, and 1991–1993. Respondents born in the early 1980s are the reference group and comprise the largest group (74%) of the analytical sample.

Analytical Approach

To study changes in the perceived fairness of the division of labor over the course of fertility transitions and the association with changes in relationship satisfaction, we consider change score analysis as the most suitable analytical approach (Allison, 1990; Morgan & Winship, 2007). These are OLS regressions using the change as the dependent variable. We thus created a two-panel data set from multiple Pairfam panels and predicted the within-person variance in relationship satisfaction in a pretest-posttest (i.e., pre-birth vs. post-birth) design. This is advantageous not least because change score models control for unmeasured heterogeneity when two measurement time points are used and are thus equivalent to fixed effects models (Johnson, 2005). In the models predicting change in relationship satisfaction, we included the pre-birth (t1) measure of the relationship satisfaction Likert scale in order to account for floor and ceiling effects.

One may argue that the multiple wave panel structure of Pairfam and the availability of methods such as latent growth curve modeling implies undeniable advantages to better deal with measurement error than our change score approach. However, for the vast majority of our sample (81%), we do not have more than one post-birth observation which would result in a strongly unbalanced panel and the implied analytical challenges.

Results

Descriptive Findings

First, we will discuss the descriptive results for our main variables of interest: relationship satisfaction, perceived fairness of labor division, and gender role attitudes in the full sample, highlighting gender differences and in a second step, point toward differences by parental status. An overview of the distributions for the full sample of men and women, as well as, stratified by parental status are presented in the upper part of Table 1.

Both men and women report relatively high relationship satisfaction with a mean of 8.34 (men) and 8.48 (women) at t1 and a mean of 8.08 (men) and 8.12 (women) at t2. Men’s relationship satisfaction decreased by 0.26 points (SD = 0.12) and women’s by 0.35 (SD = 0.10) on average. A paired t-test comparing our sample’s average change in relationship satisfaction at t1 and t2 revealed that this is a statistically significant decline in men’s and women’s relationship satisfaction after the experience of childbirth. Though the average change is not large, there is substantial heterogeneity in the within-person changes in relationship satisfaction in our sample. Almost half of men and women in our sample report a decline in relationship satisfaction after the transition to a(nother) birth. Another third of men and women do not report any change in relationship satisfaction. Finally, about one in five respondents reported increased relationship satisfaction after childbirth.

The majority of men and women consider their division of paid and unpaid work prior to the birth of a(nother) child as fair to both (76% of men and 62% of women). Both men and women who consider their housework division as unfair more frequently indicated that it under-benefitted the female partner (not shown). The proportion of men and women who—after birth of a(nother) child—consider their division to have remained stable fair is 60% and 47%, respectively, and still comprises the largest group.

Whereas differences by parental status are negligible, gender differences in the perceived fairness are apparent within the group considering their division as stable fair and stable unfair. Clearly fewer women than men perceive their labor division as stable fair throughout the transition to a(nother) birth and twice as many women than men report perceptions of unfairness before and after first birth.

Multivariate Results

Main effects: Our first hypothesis predicts that changes in perceptions of fairness would be associated with changes in relationship satisfaction, whereas actual changes in housework division would not. In our second hypothesis, we further specify that emerging or persistent perceptions of unfairness would be associated with declining relationship satisfaction after birth of a child. Therefore, in a first model specification, we predicted change in the relationship satisfaction by changes in the actual division of housework load and the perceived fairness associated with it for men and women separately, controlling for baseline (pre-birth) reported relationship satisfaction, respondent’s pre-birth employment status, and the set of other control variables. Figure 1 plots the results of two OLS regression models (i.e., for men and women in our sample) predicting change in relationship satisfaction by change in division of housework and change in the perceived fairness of housework division before and after childbirth expressed as marginal effects (the full regression tables, including the control variables can be found in Table A1). On the x-axis, the predicted change in relationship satisfaction is plotted with the value 0 indicating no change. On the y-axis, the attributes of our two central variables of our analyses are listed: types of change in the actual division of housework in the upper part and change in the perceived fairness of housework division in the lower part of the graphs.

Figure 1.

Change in reported housework division, its perceived fairness, and predicted change in relationship satisfaction for n=449 men and n = 528 women.

We will first report the findings regarding change in the division of housework reported by men (left panel) and women (right panel). As indicated by the overlapping confidence intervals, the four different groups of men and women (i.e., two indicating change and two indicating no change in the division of housework) did not differ significantly from each other in terms of the change in relationship satisfaction that they experienced.

The story is somewhat different if we look at changes in perceived fairness and relationship quality (bottom panels of Figure 1). Again, for men, we see no difference between the groups in how change in perceived fairness impacts change in relationship satisfaction. However, we do observe some significant differences for women. Two groups of mothers differ significantly from each other at the 5% percent significance level: Women who perceive their housework division as stable fair and stable unfair, respectively. The size of the difference between these groups is noteworthy. Whereas the women with stable fair division experienced virtually no change in relationship satisfaction after childbirth (the predicted margin is at −0.18 and not statistically significant from 0), the predicted reduction in relationship satisfaction of women perceiving labor division as stable unfair was reduced by nearly 0.94 points. Given that the average decrease which we observed for the full sample of women was .35, this is certainly a sizeable downturn in relationship satisfaction.

Looking at the groups of women who experienced change in the perceptions of fairness, we can see that women whose division became more fair also experienced a more pronounced drop in relationship satisfaction (by 0.43 and thus larger than the average drop in women’s relationship satisfaction). However, the difference between this group and the stable fair group is not statistically significant. We unpack this finding in our further analyses of heterogeneity by gender role attitudes. In summary, what we can conclude that the actual division of labor does not matter for the relationship satisfaction of partners across fertility transitions (as per Hypothesis 1). For men, the perceived fairness does not appear to make a difference either. For women, however, perceived fairness matters, though not entirely as we expected. It seems to be the persistent feelings of fairness and unfairness that predict stability or change in how the relationship is evaluated after the birth of a child, rather than change in these perceptions. Women who consider their division of labor as fair throughout the transition to parenthood do not experience a drop in the relationship satisfaction, whereas the consistent perception of unfairness is most detrimental to how the partnership is evaluated (partial support for Hypothesis 2).

Heterogeneity in effects: Next, we examined possible heterogeneity in the impact of the perception of unfairness on relationship satisfaction. Our expectation formulated in Hypothesis 3 was that respondents holding gender egalitarian attitudes would respond to perceptions of unfairness with steeper declines in relationship satisfaction. Therefore, we extended the initial model by including an interaction term with respondent’s gender role attitude regarding men’s involvement in housework. The full regression tables of the two OLS regression models (i.e., for men and women), including the control variables, can be found in the appendix, Table A1. We base our discussion on the findings displayed in Figure 2.

Figure 2.

Change in perceived fairness and predicted change in relationship satisfaction by gender role attitudes for n = 449 men and n = 528 women.

Whereas for men, we did not find a main effect linking perceived fairness and changes in relationship satisfaction, the stratification by gender role attitudes revealed some heterogeneity in the associations for one group of men. Among men who perceive their division of labor as stable fair, those holding egalitarian gender role attitudes have a predicted change in relationship satisfaction that is close to zero, indicating no change. Their counterparts who hold non-egalitarian gender role attitudes, however, experience a drop in relationship satisfaction by a full point. Given the average decrease in relationship satisfaction for the full sample of men of 0.26, this is a large reduction in the predicted relationship satisfaction for this group of men. This finding implies some evidence of fairness being more highly “rewarded” in terms of stable levels of relationship satisfaction during fertility transitions for the group of men who endorse egalitarian attitudes.

For women, the heterogeneity in the association between perceived fairness of labor division and relationship satisfaction is evident for the group of women who consider their division of labor becoming more fair during the transition to a first or second child. Among this group, women holding egalitarian gender role attitudes have a predicted change in relationship satisfaction that is close to zero, indicating no change. Women holding non-egalitarian gender role attitudes, by contrast, have a predicted drop in relationship satisfaction that amounts to −1.76 points. This is significantly larger than the average drop in relationship satisfaction for the full sample of women (−0.35).

Discussion

In the present study, we set out to investigate the association between changes in women’s and men’s perceptions of fairness regarding labor division and changes in relationship satisfaction across fertility transitions. Using prospective survey data collected in Germany we studied a context in which individual gender role attitudes have become more progressive (Braun & Scott, 2009; Pampel, 2011) while at different institutional levels, economic constraints and incentives are reinforced that encourage a gender inegalitarian division of labor. We therefore also explored whether the association between change in fairness perceptions and declines in relationship satisfaction differed for men and women who held egalitarian gender role attitudes versus non-egalitarian gender role attitudes, net of their actual labor market attachment and involvement in unpaid labor at home. With this, we aimed to contribute to the continued investigation of what (mis)matches between preferences and lived realities mean for individual and couple well-being, with a particular focus on fertility transitions, events in relationship life courses that may trigger substantial shifts in how labor is allocated between partners. Our study highlights three important points.

Foremost, our descriptive analyses confirm an apparent traditionalization of housework division during parenthood transitions in Germany. We found that about a third of men and women report an increasing inequality in the actual division of labor, with about another half reporting a stable unequal arrangement. Importantly, both male and female respondents agreed that the inequality was such that the female partner was carrying the larger load of household responsibilities. Furthermore, we observed a clear gender difference in how this division of labor was perceived. Though most participants did not experience a change in their perceptions of the fairness in task distribution, men were more likely to see this division as continuously fair (60.4% of all men). The perception of stable unfairness was clearly more common among women than men: Whereas about one in five women reported the division of labor as stable unfair, this was the case for about one in 10 men. This descriptive finding is particularly interesting in light of the fact that we focused on individuals who made a transition to childbirth. In other words, though a large proportion of German women perceived the division of labor as unfair, they still made the choice to have a(nother) child with their partner. This raises important questions about how partners make sense of their experiences across their parenthood transitions and how they might try to rationalize the persistent perception of unfairness (Greenstein, 1996).

A second key finding from our work is that compared to those who experienced a stable equal division of labor, changes in that division did not make a difference in how the partnership was evaluated by either men or women, supporting the argument that perceptions are crucial to consider (Coltrane, 2000; Gager & Hohmann-Marriott, 2006). In line with equity theory (Adams, 1965; Carrell & Dittrich, 1978; Pritchard, 1969; Walster et al., 1978), we found that the perception of fairness was important for mothers’ satisfaction with their relationships. Women who perceived the labor division as fair before and after childbirth had the lowest drops in relationship satisfaction compared to other women. By contrast, women who consistently felt that their couple’s labor division was unfair had the steepest declines in relationship satisfaction after the birth of a child. Interestingly, we did not find that perceived fairness distinguished between groups of fathers in terms of changes in their relationship satisfaction, similar to findings from other national contexts (e.g., Chong & Mickelson, 2016; Grote & Clark, 2001; Ruppanner et al., 2018).

Two points can be made with respect to our finding about the importance of perceived fairness. Foremost, our results clearly advocate for a continued attention to individuals’ subjective evaluation of their division of labor, rather than simply focusing on partners’ (relative) contributions in terms of hours of work performed. Second, though equity theory suggests that both the experience of being under-, as well as, over-benefitted are detrimental to satisfaction with the social tie, our results might be indicating that the effects do diverge. Our finding that the perception of a stable unfair arrangement was detrimental to women’s but not men’s relationship satisfaction may be explained by the fact that there was agreement between men and women that when a situation was unfair, it was to the detriment of the female partner. Our data do not allow us to disentangle these effects as too few men reported being under-benefitted in order to run more nuanced analyses. This kind of questions should be explored further as younger generations, with higher levels of paternal involvement in care (Preisner et al., 2020), start making the transition to parenthood.

Our final key finding concerns the heterogeneity across gender role attitudes in the impact of perceived fairness on relationship satisfaction. In our work, we found that egalitarian and non-egalitarian individuals differed in two cases: for men, when the perceived fairness was stable fair and for women, when the situation became fairer across the fertility transition. In both cases, we found that the men and women who endorsed non-egalitarian gender role attitudes experienced more pronounced drops in relationship satisfaction. Similarly to the previous finding, we interpret this result in light of the fact that when lack of fairness was perceived, that was because the female partner was under-benefitted. In other words, the perceived stable fair arrangement was more strongly contrasting both the expectations of traditional men about parenthood, as well as, the most prevalent gender displays observed in society as a whole (Ruppanner et al., 2018). Likewise, a move to more fairness (and the mother being less under-benefitted) could be at odds with the expectations of women with non-egalitarian gender role attitudes. A similar finding has been reported by Goldberg and Perry-Jenkins (2004) who found that traditional women who were doing less of the caretaking than they expected prior to childbirth experienced higher levels of depression than egalitarian women in a similar situation. What these findings suggest is that the mismatch between imagined and lived realities can have important repercussions for couples’ well-being, much more so than just the current division of labor.

There are several limitations of this study which the readers should keep in mind. Foremost, as we already mentioned, when the situation was not perceived as fair, we mostly captured circumstances where the female partner was under-benefitted. Importantly, male and female respondents agreed on who was the under-benefitted partner in their relationships. Given the existing patterns of division of labor, it is not surprising that our sample of under-benefitting men was small. Our work also focused on the period shortly after the birth of a(nother) child, which means that we cannot speak to the longer-term repercussions of, for example, increased unfairness. Whereas a temporary increase in inequity might be acceptable to partners because of the substantial transition which childbirth is, our findings indicate that a sustained experience of inequity is detrimental to women’s relationship satisfaction and importantly so—both for women who did and did not endorse egalitarian gender role attitudes prior to birth.

The findings presented here speak to one of the mechanisms which can explain why fertility transitions can have negative repercussions for couple well-being—namely, through the experience of (increased) unfairness in how responsibilities are organized within the household. This highlights again the toll which the mismatch between imagined and lived realities can take on individual well-being and potentially, couple stability.

Table A1.

Results from linear regression models for n = 449 men and n = 528 women predicting change in relationship satisfaction during the transition to a first or second child by changes in the perceived fairness of housework division and pre-birth gender role attitudes.

	Men		Women
	Model 1	Model 2	Model 3	Model 4
Perceived fairness labor division (T1 → T2)
More fair	0.094 (0.731)	0.614 (0.262)	−0.251 (0.239)	−1.220* (0.040)
Stable fair (Reference)
Stable unfair	0.144 (0.665)	1.005 (0.129)	−0.759*** (0.001)	−0.694 (0.219)
More unfair	0.592* (0.025)	1.705** (0.008)	0.127 (0.582)	0.619 (0.281)
Holds egalitarian gender role attitudes		0.844** (0.007)		0.411 (0.240)
Interactions
egalitarian * more fair		−0.644 (0.307)		1.099 (0.082)
egalitarian * stable fair (ref. = traditional)
egalitarian * stable unfair		−1.089 (0.148)		0.087 (0.888)
egalitarian * more unfair		−1.351 (0.055)		−0.570 (0.363)
T1 Relationship satisfaction	−0.839*** (0.000)	−0.843*** (0.000)	−0.784*** (0.000)	0.783*** (0.000)
Division housework labor (T1→T2)
More equal	−0.109 (0.783)	−0.021 (0.957)	−0.387 (0.272)	−0.310 (0.379)
Stable equal (Reference)
Stable unequal	−0.097 (0.720)	−0.002 (0.993)	−0.506* (0.048)	−0.454 (0.079)
More unequal	−0.037 (0.894)	0.001 (0.998)	−0.347 (0.201)	−0.350 (0.196)
Parity ( Ref. = first birth )
Second birth	−0.196 (0.375)	−0.222 (0.316)	−0.068 (0.755)	−0.034 (0.876)
Age of youngest child	−0.035* (0.011)	−0.033* (0.018)	−0.002 (0.835)	−0.002 (0.782)
Union duration	−0.001 (0.777)	−0.001 (0.642)	0.005* (0.048)	0.004 (0.057)
Education
Lower-level secondary school degree	0.246 (0.392)	0.180 (0.532)	0.269 (0.355)	0.261 (0.369)
Medium-level secondary school degree (Reference)
Higher-level secondary school degree	0.515* (0.018)	0.461* (0.037)	0.042 (0.815)	0.005 (0.979)
Employment
Fulltime employed/self-employed (Reference)
Part time, marginally or occasionally employed	0.881 (0.171)	0.733 (0.258)	0.332 (0.185)	0.294 (0.241)
Maternity/parental leave	0.780 (0.492)	0.606 (0.597)	0.209 (0.470)	0.170 (0.556)
In education/out of employment	−0.039 (0.873)	−0.041 (0.869)	−0.140 (0.499)	−0.177 (0.392)
Region ( Ref. = West )
East	−0.435* (0.037)	−0.473* (0.024)	−0.077 (0.665)	−0.122 (0.493)
Birth cohort
1991–1993	0.063 (0.900)	0.037 (0.037)	−0.010 (0.976)	0.024 (0.942)
1981–1983 (Reference)
1971–1973	0.142 (0.558)	0.142 (0.558)	−0.437 (0.071)	−0.430 (0.074)
N	449	449	528	528
R ²	0.483	0.493	0.431	0.442

p-values in parentheses.

* p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iDs

Nicole Hiekel

Katya Ivanova

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