Relationship Between Parents’ Educational Attitudes and Children’s Housework Performance in Chinese Households: Does Children’s Gender Matter?

Yixiao Liu , University of Maryland
Quanbao Jiang, Xi'an Jiaotong University
Feinian Chen, University of Maryland

Few studies discuss gender and children’s housework from a family resource investment perspective. Children’s housework can reflect parental educational investment strategies due to the time competition: more housework activities means less time for schoolwork activities. If parents have positive educational attitudes toward education, will they allocate less housework to this child? Will this association differ by gender? Using data derived from 2014 China Education Panel Survey , this article gains an understanding of the above questions. After conducting OLS analysis, the results reveal that associations between parents’ educational attitudes and children’s housework do exist but differ by gender. Parental education requirement and children's key school attendance are negatively associated with girl’s current housework time, regardless of this girl’s hukou. Parental education requirement and children's key school attendance are positively related with urban boys’ housework time, but such relationships cannot be observed among rural boys.

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 Presented in Session 2. Children & Youth