Redefining Parent's Unpaid Labour: Distinguishing Errands from Housework for Targeted Mental Health Policy

• Published date: 01 December 2023
• Author: Nataliya Ilyushina
• Date: 01 December 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8462.12539

The Australian Economic Review, vol. 56, no. 4, pp. 516–523DOI: 10.1111/1467-8462.12539

Redefining Parent's Unpaid Labour: Distinguishing Errands

from Housework for Targeted Mental Health Policy

Nataliya Ilyushina*

Abstract

Studies of the association between unpaid

housework and wellbeing, especially for

parents, has produced either negative or

inconclusive results in previous studies. One

potential oversight is that ‘housework’often

includes activities with a counteracting effect

on mental health. By employing the

Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in

Australia (HILDA) data set that differentiates

‘housework’from more routine tasks included

in the ‘errands’variable I illustrate the

difference in the pattern of how these

variables are linked to parents' mental health.

By identifying specific groups of unpaid tasks

that are most detrimental to mental health,

policymakers can prioritise these areas, en-

suring that negative associations are not

wrongly attributed to all housework activities.

1. Background

While housekeeping is unpaid work, it

would represent the largest occupation if

it were classified as such (Bird and Ross

1993). Most previous research examining

housework time has reported a negative

association between time spent on house-

work and mental health and other measures

of wellbeing (see, for example, Bird 1999;

Glass and Fujimoto 1994).

Time spent on housework activities is

commonly associated with a higher occur-

rence of depression (Glass and Fujimoto

1994). Bird (1999) found that housework has

a negative impact on mental health, especially

for females. Further, Bird (1999) and Bird and

Fremont (1991) argued that gender differ-

ences in mental health can be attributed to the

division of household labour, and higher

levels of distress for females stem from a

disproportionate housework allocation. Some

studies have documented the negative impact

of housework on the mental health of both

males and females (Barnett and Rivers 1996;

Bartley et al. 1992; Roxburg 2004).

2. Housework Variable Composition and

Mental Health

What are the aspects of housework that

increase the level of psychological distress?

First, household work is highly routine

(Berheide 1984; Bird 1999; Eichler 2010;

Zhou et al. 2020) and has been found to be

more so than paid work (Bird and Ross 1993).

* BlockchainInnovationHub,RMITUniversityand

ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision‐

Making and Society (ADM+S), Melbourne 3000,

Australia; email <nataliya.ilyushina@rmit.edu.au>.

© 2023 The Authors. The Australian Economic Review published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd on behalf of The University of

Melbourne, Melbourne Institute: Applied Economic & Social Research, Faculty of Business and Economics.

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