Husband doing chores
The Associated Press

A husband doing chores? Take that, University of Michigan study!

Featured Topic | Posted 34 weeks 16 hours ago

Battle of the sexes: Do men add to women's housework in marriage?

For married women who can't figure out why they always have so much housework researchers may have the answer -- husbands. A new study from the University of Michigan shows that having a husband creates an extra seven hours of extra housework a week for women. But a wife saves her husband from an hour of chores around the house each week.

"It's a well-known pattern. There's still a significant reallocation of labor that occurs at marriage -- men tend to work more outside the home, while women take on more of the household labor," said Frank Stafford, of the university's Institute for Social Research (ISR), who directed the study. "And the situation gets worse for women when they have children," he added in a statement.

Does the University of Michigan study reflect reality? Do men and women divide chores equally or not? Are men shirking their duties at home? Or are they doing different but essential tasks that don't involve dishes, laundry or vacuuming?

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Ben likes: Men, women and the housework enigma

Tom Purcell/Cagle Post

The male mind doesn't care as much about the inside of the house as the outside. Our noggins are wired for larger spaces, such as the garage, the driveway, the yard. Sure, some men are neat freaks and homebodies and some women are sloppy and couldn't care less about the inside of their homes. But where biology is concerned, the male and female brains are different.

But the housework study isn't so interested in biological truths. It is more interested in one of its key findings: that the institution of marriage appears to change the division of household labor. In married relationships, even if an egalitarian viewpoint is present, men still report doing less housework than their wives, says George Mason sociologist Shannon Davis.

"Marriage as an institution seems to have a traditionalizing effect on couples -- even couples who see men and women as equal," she says. In other words, marriage itself is the reason women are forced to pick up stinky socks and wipe up the slop in the kitchen after dinner.

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Joel likes: Can you even the score on housework?

Feministing

Obviously, this plays out really different based on your class background or the type of relationship you are in, but consistently, both in my experience, the experience of my peers and others, the majority of house work falls on the shoulders of women. It is the assumed default position, that if it isn't done, than guess who is going to end up doing it.

Who is expected to do what in the household is extremely political and it isn't just a matter of convenience or someone whining more than the other. It is based on a historical division of labor that is the crux of the nation. Furthermore, when middle class women do not have the time to clean their houses, who do they hire to clean them? So still, today, the majority of house cleaning is done by women and mostly women of color. 

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