2022 Volume 29 Issue 1 Pages 15-23
Purpose: To categorize the division of household work between wives and husbands and to clarify the relationship between the style of household work division and the wife’s quality of life (QOL) during the postpartum period.
Methods: The study participants were pregnant women who received the maternity record book in Ibaraki City; we used data from the Ibaraki Cohort Study, particularly, the surveys of women 3 months into the postpartum period. Those who had responded to the survey at 3 months postpartum (n = 105) were included in the analysis. The amount of housework and the wives’ QOL were used as variables.
Results: We conducted a hierarchical cluster analysis based on the scores of the wives’ and husbands’ division of household work and revealed that there were four styles of sharing household work, namely, “wife leading,” “sharing,” “husband leading,” and “reducing household work.” Wives’ QOL was higher in the group of “sharing” and “husband leading” than “wife leading.”
Conclusion: Various types of housework-sharing styles were determined from the analysis. Previous studies only mentioned the “wife leading style”; however, in this study, “sharing style,” wherein the husband cooperates with the wife, the “husband leading style,” wherein the husband voluntarily takes on more housework than the wife, and “reducing style,” wherein the couple reduce the amount of housework, were observed. Substantial sharing of housework by husbands was thought to be effective in increasing wives’ QOL.
