Recession upends routines at home

• Article
• Comments ()
• Click-2-Listen
• Videos

By Lisa Orkin Emmanuel ASSOCIATED PRESS

MIAMI

Lily Pabian and her husband Jeff learned to tag-team household tasks when he lost his job and she went from stay-at-home mom to part-time consultant.

But the give-and-take turned into a juggling act when Jeff found work again three months later.

Mrs. Pabian, a 37-year-old mother of three from Mapleton, Ga., kept working, but also kept most of the parenting responsibilities and housework. And experts say her experience will probably be typical as more women are finding themselves becoming primary breadwinners temporarily.

"I feel like there are days where I am drowning," Mrs. Pabian said. "We do fight about my overload, my work load, and he's willing to say 'What can I do to help?' My thing is 'Why do I have to think for you?' "

An estimated 2 million wives are now the sole breadwinners in families across America as more men than women are laid off in this recession, according to the Center for American Progress.

Experts say that unemployed husbands are probably taking on more of the housework and child care duties - for now. But they don't expect that temporary change at home to create household habits that will stick around after men find work again.

"When men make more money they can buy out of housework in a way women cannot," said Constance Gager, a sociologist in the Department of Family and Child Studies at Montclair State University.

Ms. Gager has studied the division of labor in families and said that while men have taken on more housework and child-rearing over the years, women still do two-thirds of it, including day-to-day tasks like diaper-changing, bathing, preparing meals and shuttling the children to activities. Men, meanwhile, tend to play with children or participate in athletic games.

"It is very much the case that women tend to do urgent tasks that are repetitive," she said.