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• Most emerging adults report growing up with a gendered division at home. • Most emerging adults find their parents' gendered division fair. • Reasoning is associated with fairness perceptions. • Equality justification usage predicted finding the division unfair. • Individuals were more critical of hypothetical than real-life divisions. This study investigated American heterosexual emerging adults' evaluations and reasoning about the fairness of their parents' gendered division of household labor, their future expectations of their own division, and in a third-party situation. A total of 161 American heterosexual (88.20 % European American; 50.93 % cisgender women), emerging adults (M = 20.60, SD = 1.21) participated in this study. The majority of participants evaluated their parents' and future expected division to be fair. On the other hand, participants were less likely to consider a hypothetical gendered division fair. Equality justification usage, as well as reported parental childcare division predicted differences in fairness evaluations. The present study highlights the importance of employing methods that can capture the complex and multi-faceted nature of fairness evaluations and reasoning about the gendered division of household labor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]