Does Online Dating Challenge Gendered Marital Practices?

Abs­tract:

„Dating onli­ne thro­ugh either websi­tes, pho­ne apps, or onli­ne social networks is now both com­mon and social­ly endor­sed (Berg­ström 2012; Smith 2016). In cer­ta­in con­te­xts (e.g., U.S.), it has even recen­tly beco­me the num­ber one way of meeting part­ners (Rosen­feld et al. 2019). Social scien­ti­sts have alre­ady poin­ted out some of the social trans­for­ma­tions bro­ught abo­ut by onli­ne dating. Inter­net-mat­ched hete­ro­se­xu­al couples for instan­ce expe­rien­ce faster trans­i­tions into mar­ria­ge (Rosen­feld 2017), and display less homo­ga­my in terms of socio-demo­gra­phic back­gro­und (Potar­ca 2017, 2020; Tho­mas 2019). Tho­ugh so far une­xplo­red, an addi­tio­nal anti­ci­pa­ted trans­for­ma­tion is the chal­len­ging of gen­de­red rela­tion­ship prac­ti­ces (Har­dey 2002). Despi­te advan­ces in women’s edu­ca­tion, labor for­ce par­ti­ci­pa­tion, and ear­ning power (England et al. 2020), and near­ly uni­ver­sal pre­fe­ren­ces towards equ­ity in the allo­ca­tion of house­work (Auspurg et al. 2017), women still do more house­work than men (Geist and Rup­pan­ner 2018; Hu 2019).

Thro­ugh its uni­que featu­res (e.g., lar­ger cho­ice set, con­di­tions of ano­ny­mi­ty, com­pa­ti­bi­li­ty mat­ching), onli­ne court­ship might allow indi­vi­du­als, espe­cial­ly women, to bet­ter nego­tia­te dating scripts and poten­tial­ly bypass nor­ma­ti­ve rela­tion­ship expec­ta­tions of fema­le part­ners car­ry­ing the load of house­work. Within a spa­ce that allows for more fine-tuned cho­ices, indi­vi­du­als could reject conven­tio­nal gen­de­red norms in an effort to con­struct inti­ma­cy out­si­de of social­ly sanc­tio­ned prac­ti­ces. By pro­vi­ding incre­ased infor­ma­tion on poten­tial can­di­da­tes than usu­al­ly ava­ila­ble in face-to-face meeting con­te­xts, the onli­ne mar­ket­pla­ce could esta­blish itself as a part­ne­ring spa­ce whe­re women select men on non-eco­no­mic con­si­de­ra­tions (Press 2004), such as good com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills or abi­li­ty to pro­vi­de emo­tio­nal sup­port (Law­son and Leck 2006). Given the link betwe­en high levels of emo­tio­nal inti­ma­cy and part­ner­ship com­mu­ni­ca­tion quali­ty, on the one hand, and the equ­al allo­ca­tion of house­work, on the other hand (Carl­son et al. 2020; Kom­ter 1989), the result would be onli­ne daters cra­fting more ega­li­ta­rian rela­tion­ships than tho­se selec­ting part­ners in conven­tio­nal ways.

To test this hypo­the­sis, the cur­rent stu­dy uses up-to-date panel data on mar­ried adults (N = 2,243 indi­vi­du­als, n = 6,418 obse­rva­tions) from Ger­ma­ny – pair­fam waves I‑XI (2008 to 2019) – and inspects the link betwe­en meeting con­text and the pro­ba­bi­li­ty of enga­ging in an ega­li­ta­rian divi­sion of house­hold labor as oppo­sed to the tra­di­tio­nal arran­ge­ment in which the wife takes over all or most of the char­ge. We spe­ci­fi­cal­ly exa­mi­ne the allo­ca­tion of house­work, a high­ly gen­de­red, tra­di­tio­nal­ly fema­le-per­for­med task (Hook 2017). We also exa­mi­ne gen­der and social class dif­fe­ren­ces (defi­ned by level of edu­ca­tion), and acco­unt for mecha­ni­sms of social homo­ga­my as well as vario­us sour­ces of onli­ne dating selectivity.

The stu­dy pro­vi­des the first quan­ti­ta­ti­ve and natio­nal­ly repre­sen­ta­ti­ve evi­den­ce of whe­ther onli­ne dating trans­forms gen­de­red prac­ti­ces in mar­ria­ge. Par­ti­cu­lar­ly on the back­drop of a stal­led gen­der revo­lu­tion (Cot­ter et al. 2011; England 2010; Gold­sche­ider et al. 2015), in a con­text known for the per­si­sten­ce of the male bre­adwin­ner and the one-and-a-half ear­ner models (Esping-Ander­sen 2018; Hook 2015), and whe­re high-ear­ning women often enga­ge in gen­der-com­pen­sa­to­ry beha­vior (Pro­cher et al. 2018), it is impor­tant to inqu­ire whe­ther the Inter­net as alter­na­ti­ve public spa­ce assi­sts adults in decon­struc­ting tra­di­tio­nal fami­ly models in gene­ral, and gen­der-asym­me­tric scripts of divi­ding unpa­id work within mar­ria­ge in par­ti­cu­lar. In other words, we seek to iden­ti­fy whe­ther advan­ces in the digi­tal revo­lu­tion can serve as tools in advan­cing the gen­der revolution.

First results based on ran­dom effects mode­ling indi­ca­te that lower (and not higher) edu­ca­ted women who met the­ir part­ner onli­ne do enga­ge in a less tra­di­tio­nal split of house­work. The results are lar­ge­ly rela­ted to selec­ti­vi­ty (e.g., in terms of gen­der valu­es), but also, as pre­dic­ted, bet­ter mat­ching on emo­tio­nal attributes.