I just read Sue Shellenberger’s “Work & Family” column in last week’s Wall Street Journal in which she addresses one of the primary sources of marital conflict in America: who does the housework? She describes a new study that purports to show that husbands are doing a larger share of the household chores than their wives give them credit for (but still not as much as the men think they’re doing).<\/p>\n
From the WSJ article:<\/p>\n
Shedding new light on the decades-old battle between men and women over housework, the study of 265 married couples with children, published this month in the Journal of Marriage and Family, shows that wives estimate, when asked, that their husbands do 33% of the housework. But when researchers tracked men’s actual housework time, they found husbands were shouldering 39% of the chore load.<\/em>Husbands aren’t getting off the hook entirely, though. They still give themselves too much credit, the study shows, claiming they do 42% of the work around the house.<\/p>\n The trend of men assuming more of the chores around the house is not new.<\/p>\n It’s clear men are doing more work around the house. Women’s average housework time fell by nearly half between 1965 and 1995, to 17.5 hours a week from 30, while men’s almost doubled to 10 hours from 4.9 hours, based on a survey of four national studies published<\/em> in 2000 by the University of Maryland’s Suzanne Bianchi and others.<\/p>\n I suspect that many wives still feel that their husbands aren’t pulling their weight (or pushing the vacuum cleaner) when it comes to helping out around the house, but the ladies have to shoulder some of the blame for that. Some of us guys just don’t have a clue as to how hard and time-consuming housework is.<\/p>\n It wasn’t until I began working at home that I realized that I fell into the “clueless and lazy” category. I was perceptive enough to see that I had more free time than my wife. She was also making roughly four times as much as me (I’ve managed to narrow that gap to a multiple of only three), and I figured that if she was going to carry the financial load, I should haul more of the other loads. Here’s how we’ve split things up:<\/p>\n Now, I already know what you’re thinking. “Gee, she still gets all the yucky stuff.” I’ll concede that point, but only conceptually. Granted, she does do most of the wetwork, but you also have to factor in frequency if you want to compute actual workload. I’ll match vacuuming the whole house each week against mopping the 50% of our square footage that has tile every 3 weeks. And don’t let the cooking fool you, either; that happens on average about 3-4 times per week. I still assemble breakfast every morning (and do the cleanup) and put out the lunch components (and do the cleanup) each workday.<\/p>\n You’ll also notice the check and balance we have with respect to our financial records. I record everything; she corrects my mistakes.<\/p>\n So, at times I feel pretty good about doing my share around the house. But, then I realize that it’s still not enough; she works hard at her job, and I need to make her life as easy as possible. That’s what you do for someone you love.<\/p>\n But I draw the line at cleaning the bathrooms. That’s just gross.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" American husbands are doing more housework than their wives give them credit for…but it’s still probably not enough.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-society-culture","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2882"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2882\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14242,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2882\/revisions\/14242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n\n
\n Mine:
\n<\/strong>Vacuuming
\nLaundry
\nDishwasher unloading
\nTrash duty
\nMake bed\/change sheets
\nLawn Mowing & leaf blowing
\nGrocery Shopping (90%)
\nBill Paying
\nErrands (Dog groomer & Vet appointments, Cleaners, Restaurant takeout runs, etc.)
\nCar maintenance<\/td>\nHers:
\n<\/strong>Cooking & cleanup
\nBathroom Cleaning
\nMopping
\nGrocery Shopping (10%)
\nCheckbook Reconciliation
\nFlower bed & potted plant care<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n