ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates whether and to what degree the woman's attachment to the domestic role, as expressed in the attitude measures in the Social Change in Economic Life Initiative (SCELI) data set, lead her to performing a greater proportion of domestic work. It examines whether Arlie Hochschild's notion of the 'family myth' gains empirical support from the SCELI data set. The chapter discusses the process of analysing differential effect of partners' attitudes on practices through data from the SCELI survey on whether respondents feel that their domestic work contributions are fair. It models the simultaneous effect of both partners' attitudes whilst controlling for material factors that might act as a constraint upon the structure of domestic work practices. The chapter explains that after controlling for other factors, the man's attitudes will have a more powerful effect in structuring the proportion of domestic work that the partners do individually. It also considers an examination of Hochschild's concept of the 'family myth'.
