WIVES AND HUSBANDS HOUSEWORK REPORTING - GENDER, CLASS, AND SOCIAL DESIRABILITY

This investigation places recent research about changes in wives' and husbands' domestic labor in the context of well-known reporting differ ences between different kinds of housework surveys. An analysis of the ''reporting gap'' between direct-question reports of housework hours from the National Survey of Families and Households (1988) and time-di ary reports from Americans' Use of Time, 1985, shows that both husband s and wives overreport their housework contributions. Furthermore, gen der attitudes, total housework class, education, income, family cite, and employment status together significantly affect the overreport, al though the variables operate bl different ways for wives and husbands. It is concluded that changing and uneven social perceptions of the ap propriate domestic roles of women and men have resulted in reporting b iases that do not necessarily correspond to actual changes in housewor k behavior These findings cast doubt on claims that contemporary husba nds are doing more housework than their predecessors.