Role overload

Rachel has role overload [16]. That is, she has difficulty combining the roles of worker and of wife and mother. Role overload is one of the disad­vantages that today's women face. While both parents are more "stretched" when the woman of the household works, it is usually the woman who does most of the childcare and housework. Most studies investigating housework conclude that women (whether employed or not) do "the lion's share" of housework and childcare. An Australian study, for example, found that employed wives did 69.3 hours of unpaid work around the house during a two-week period while employed hus­bands did approximately 31.2 hours. A study by Bird (1999) shows a sim­ilar picture for U.S. households. In this study of 1,256 adults, Bird showed that while working women certainly want an equal share of housework, they "shoulder the main burden" by doing approximately twice as much as their spouses. Her study showed that after marriage, women gain 14 hours of household chores per week, while their hus­ bands gain only 90 minutes.