while these roles could be reversed women typically specialise in household labour because of a temporary comparative biological advantage in caregiving around child birth these initial comparative advantages then turn into longlasting behaviours because people tend to get better at skills the more they use them early socialisation also reinforces gendered roles becker argues because parents seek to prepare their children for responsibilities which they assume will benefit them in the marriage market yet this division of labour is neither strict nor fixed as common preferences models like becker s would suggest rather divisions of labour vary across couples and have blurred with time bianchi et al