Colloquium in September 2024
Youngcho Lee(Pusan National University, Department of Sociology)
Previous studies on the gendered division of household labor and responsibilities have characterized mothers as the household managers primarily responsible for mental labor and fathers as ‘helping out’ with physical tasks when asked or given directions.
While such a description may indeed account for the majority of different-sex couples, the current paper contends that the image of mothers as managers and fathers as helpers is conceptually limiting in that it reproduces a ‘deficit model of masculinity’ as well as failing to capture a diversity of couples who may not concur with this dynamic.
Drawing on in-depth individual interviews (N=36) with both parents of eighteen Korean married dual-earner couples with children, I offer a conceptualization and analysis of the varied ways couples are departing away from the manager-helper dynamic to share responsibility for managing the household. I further discuss factors that enable fathers’ greater roles across both physical and mental dimensions of household labor.
