Role balance among white married couples

We generate models predicting wives' and husbands' feelings of overall bala nce across roles. Drawing on fine-grained data about marital lifestyles and time use, we find few predictors that are the same for both partners. Both report greater role balance when their level of parental attachment to chi ldren is higher and when their marital satisfaction is greater, but gendere d time use gives rise to important differences. Wives report greater balanc e when they have more paid work hours but have fewer of these hours on week ends. Wives' balance is also greater when they feel less financial strain, have less leisure time alone with their children, more couple leisure alone with their husbands, and more social network involvement. Husbands' contri bute to wives' balance when they report more relationship maintenance in th e marriage and more leisure with their children at those times when wives a re not present. Husbands' own role balance increases as their income rises, but it decreases as their work hours rise. Husbands' balance also rises wi th more nuclear family leisure, and it lessens as their leisure alone incre ases. Our discussion highlights the ways that gendered marital roles lead t o these different correlates of balance.