Studies indicate that continuing gender inequality in the labour market may be partly attributed to the persistent gender gap in unpaid labour within the household. Building on research that suggests that this gap is exacerbated during the transition to parenthood, this study uses Understanding Society data to examine how the impact of children on couples’ housework hours may vary by child gender. Results show that men who co-reside with at least one daughter in the household perform fewer hours of housework per week relative to men who only have sons, while there is no corresponding impact of child gender on mothers’ housework hours. Effect size is larger when oldest daughter is secondary school-aged or older, and there is strong evidence of ethnic group level heterogeneity – effect sizes for South Asian men being almost three times larger than White British men.
The heterogeneity in results between fathers and mothers and the findings on daughter age suggest that in households where there are daughters present, there is to some extent a transfer of housework responsibilities from father to daughter. This may be an important pathway via which children may be socialized in traditional gender roles within the family, leading to the continued existence of the housework gender gap.