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Housework and Mental Health of Adolescent Girls and Boys in India

Nancy Luke, Pennsylvania State University
Ashley Gibby, Brigham Young University

Mental health conditions are now among the most common illnesses adolescents face worldwide. Recent research considers youth’s daily activities as determinants of their mental health, yet studies tend to focus on screen time (computers, video games, social networking sites), particularly in industrialized countries. There is scant research in the Global South, where youth’s daily activities significantly differ from those in industrialized countries. We focus on time spent in housework—a highly gendered activity—among adolescent girls and boys in rural South India and its relationship to anxiety and depressive symptoms. We find that adolescents’ anxiety and depressive symptoms are lower than in many other countries and that boys’ depressive symptoms are higher than girls,’ also contrary to other countries. Time diary data show that girls do fives time more daily housework than boys on average. Regression results find that more time spent in housework is associated with increased anxiety and depressive symptoms among girls, and increased anxiety symptoms among boys. These results support the view that housework is undervalued for girls and stigmatized for boys, thereby worsening adolescent mental health.

Keywords: Gender, Time use surveys, Health and morbidity, Family demography

See extended abstract.

  Presented in Session P4.