Male Breadwinning Revisited: How Specialization, Gender Role Attitudes and Work Affect Overwork and Underwork in Europe.

We examine how male breadwinning and fatherhood relate to men’s overwork and underwork in western Europe. Male breadwinners should be less likely to experience overwork than other men, particularly when they have children, if specialization suits them. However, multinomial regression analysis of the European Social Survey (ESS) (n=4658) challenges this position: male breadwinners, with and without children, want to work fewer hours reinforcing a downside of specialization. The work characteristics associated with being a breadwinner mediate its effects. In particular being a manager and supervising others are associated with overwork, while weekend work and worrying about finances are associated with underwork. Work-life interference has a significant impact on overwork and mediates the effect of being a breadwinner, but it has an effect that is over and beyond the separate effects of work characteristics and family structure.