WOMEN'S MENTAL HEALTH: IMPACT OF WORK AND FAMILY

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The proposed work seeks to address several major unresolved issues regarding the relationships between gender and mental and physical health, as measured by depression and self-rated health, respectively. The long- term objective of this project is to identify social determinants of men's and women's depression and self-rated health, and thereby advance the understanding of the social origins of depression and of gender differences in depression and self-rated health. Data from the National Survey of Health Households (NSFH), a two-wave longitudinal survey of a national, representative sample of U.S. households, provide an unprecedented opportunity to study, in a large representative population, the consequences of the division and paid work and household labor for men and women and to identify mechanisms and processes by which gender roles and role-related activities affect depression and self-rated health. The proposed work seeks: (1) to assess the influence of employment, housework, and the division of paid and unpaid work between spouses on men's and women's depression and self-rated health, (2) to examine intervening factors (e.g., perceived role quality and perceived fairness of the division of paid and unpaid work) that might account for the affects of employment , housework, and the division of labor on depression and self- rated health, (3) to explore the extent to which gender differences in the effects of social roles and the division f paid and unpaid work on depression and self-rated health vary across racial and ethnic groups (i.e., whites, blacks, and Hispanics). Due to women's increasing employment throughout their child-bearing years, men and women face greater strains balancing paid work and household labor in the past. Yet, there have been no comprehensive studies on the impact of the division of paid work and household of labor on men's and women's mental and physical health. Gender difference in social roles, role quality, and time spent on role-related activities, must be taken into account in order to understand the gender differences in mental and physical health among adults. The information available on the differential effects of housework and the division of paid and unpaid work within households on men's and women's mental and physical health is extremely fragmented. This study will attempt to clarify the inconsistent findings by examining the effects of perceived role quality as well as perceived fairness of the division of roles on men and women in majority and minority populations. This study promises to fill several gaps in the knowledge about the social determinants of men's and women's health, to set the stage for more extensive longitudinal analyses, and to raise new possibilities for social intervention designed to enhance physical and mental health. The strengths of the proposed study are the large sample size of the NSFH, its represntativeness, the oversample of Blacks and Hispanics, the repeated measures of depression, self-rated health, work, and the division of paid and unpaid work, and the wealth of sociodemographic data on the respondent's lives.