Wives Do More Housework, Study Shows

nice

i think wives do do more house work because men USUALLY have harder jobs to do and though women have hard jobs too they are more tough

7 hrs of house work

So whats your point. Your rightful place is in the kitchens and bedrooms. Women should be honor to care for their Masters.........Duhhhhh!!!!!!

GROSSLY MISLEADING STORY

Looks like the author'ess' had a good course in news spin. The main result/moral of the research is women do FAR LESS work now than their mothers or grandmothers and married men do a LOT MORE than their fathers or grandfathers! And this should be very reassuring for women. Instead of painting the whole picture in the right manner, this article paints a partial picture in the negative manner giving false ammunition to wives to disrupt the harmony of homes. Gross Mischief! Another example of how a woman can turn around something and use against a man, where, in fact, it would be the man who has the right to complain in the first place!

let's see a study seeing how many hours a week men work outside the home, and how many hours a woman works outside the home. Add to that this study, and let's see who does more work overall. I know in a lot of specific cases, women do work more out of the home than their husbands....but in those cases, I am assuming that either the man does more housework, or they hire someone to do it for them.

Comment from Deborah Kotz

Chris: Great suggestion. I'd like to see such a study.

Married man: I'm not exactly sure what point you're trying to make. I was saying in my blog that we don't really know what's going on in terms of how responsibilities are shared in the home since the study only looked at a small slice of tasks, mainly cleaning. I'm guessing that men are doing more around the house these days because their wives are doing more labor outside the home. The days of forcing women back into the kitchen are long over. But husbands who actually want that--and my guess is they're few and far between--can take comfort in the notion that you can rely on your significant other to provide a large, or even the entire, chunk of the earnings.

I don't believe there is a superior gender.

I think that this artical twisted info to make the husbands look bad. Women and men are supposed to share responibilities. There are many husbands out there that are great. They are never selfish and privide well for their families.

How much money husband uses to buy wife gifts?

I'd like to see a study that examines how many hours a husband spends to make the money used towards buying useless expensive gifts like diamonds and $2,000 shoes and vacations in Hawaii for the wife, versus how many hours the wife spends making money for the husband.

I think its funny...

Looking at the statistics the amount of housework a man does from single --> married vs women for single ---> married increases by more than the increased load on the woman.

What this tells me is: "Women are filthy slobs and men have to pick up the slack"

Isn't it enough that you spend the vast majority of the earned income? And spend significantly more on "Self" than the man is allowed to?

POINTLESS!

This is the most pointless survey of all time...

it shows nothing... so many variables are unaccounted for... like number of hours at an office and whether they have kids and etc.

woman generally do more housework than men when they're married because they usually work less hours at a career. the husband is still usually the main breadwinner. that's not a big deal.....

let's do another pointlless survey.... like... oh wait i better not give these fools any ideas.

injustice sone to women

we simply manipulate women only on the ground of being male.

cooking is a chore

Thank goodness my husband is a good cook. Our parents generation, the men do not seem to know how to. And when I cook he cleans up. I still cook about 70% of the time. Bills are also a chore. He does 70% while I do about 30%. It does balance, but to be fair I do the real down and dirty cleaning around the house, such as bathrooms, floors and the frig. My problem is that my standards are a bit higher than his, so he wont usually get to the toilet because I wont let it get to the point of it looking like it needs it. I just do it often enough. Of course there are chores I hate to do such as laundry. We do our own laundry. Been married for 17 years. No kids yet. Could that change everything? Yikes@!

BS

I do much more and my wife do much less, although she does spends much more time shopping, she says that's only natural since she didn't have the extra time before we were married. Hmmm, I wonder!!!

Here is how it is.

Women do more work in general - but because their standard of cleaningless is much higher than a typical straigh man. So they feel obligated to clean because they are cleaner creatures. Women work less on average and get paid a little less, than man do. So we see imporvement but nto equality. I work my wife is in school, does most of the houseworks - no kids, when we have kids i'll do more housework.

So needless to say who is a breadwinner.

how it is

I am a mother of 3 daughters 12, 10, 8 and I have a husband. I am a mother before I am a wife! My housework is last on my list. I do the basics to get by and if something extra gets done great!, otherwise instead of getting our clothes from the basket, we get them off the sectional. If my husband didnt like it, he would be filling in! In this situation I am the bread winner!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And if the work does not get dfone so what? Since i am the bread winner i can hire a maid!!!

women do more house work because

they are slobs......

HOUSEWORK IS WOMENS WORK

I don't know how the rest of the country handles their wives, but down south, especially in the great state of Mississippi, the wife does the housework. And what is so hard about housework, especially compared to your great-grand mother who for instance washed clothes on a washboard and then hung them on a clothes line. Just pour in some soap, punch a button and the machines do the work for you.

Next thing you know the washing machine will be complaining about doing more house work than the man of the house. Get over it, and if you think this is sexist, you are right, the last time I looked the sexes were "different" thus the different roles.

Housework

I am a wife and mother of 2. I am so glad that my husband doesn't look at me as his equal. The last thing I want to do is act like a man, or be treated like a man.

Also, I guess the "President of the Company", sweeps the floors. Us women are never satisfied untill we can have everything our way. Do any of you think about your spouses and think how we would feel if they came home and complained about how much of a chore it is to go to work and support a family, I would not respect my husband very much. If I thought housework was so hard and didn't want to do it, then I would just have a roommate.

Strange, isn't it?

If hours of housework were your only yardstick, you would look at this and say "why be married, anyway?" Both women and men do more housework after they are married. I would think that there would be less work if there are two people to do it, but apparently not. I mean how come two average single people with separate households do a combined 22 hours of work per week, then if they get married their combined household work is 30 hours. I would think it would take fewer hours of work to clean one household rather than two like if they were single. Somehow it just doesn't add up!

This study is BS

If you look at the chart, it shows single women and single me doing less house work than a married couple. Why would married people need to do so much housework? The only think I can figure is they keep picking up AFTER each other. Logic would show that 2 singles should add up to the same amount as 2 marrieds but it does not. The whole thing shows me that this study is BS.

I am a woman and I do less house work married than single, we share the work.

My increased workload.

I work and my wife stays at home. I just sat down and figured out that I have to work at least 15 additional hours per week to support our family over what I would need to work if I were single. Maybe it's time to trade places as I would be 8 hours up on the deal if I became the housewife.

Maybe they both just THINK they are doing it

Maybe each person thinks is pretending to do house work... or maybe they are redoing the house work of the other. LOL

"Strange, isn't it?

If hours of housework were your only yardstick, you would look at this and say "why be married, anyway?" Both women and men do more housework after they are married. I would think that there would be less work if there are two people to do it, but apparently not. I mean how come two average single people with separate households do a combined 22 hours of work per week, then if they get married their combined household work is 30 hours. I would think it would take fewer hours of work to clean one household rather than two like if they were single. Somehow it just doesn't add up!"

Deborah Kotz comments

I believe the reason total time spent on housework goes up when two people marry is at least partly due to children. But even when the studied compared married folks without kids to single folks, they still found that the total number of housework went up. This link http://umich.edu/news/Releases/2008/Apr08/cleaning.html has all the study graphs with this data. I'm not sure whether the researchers know why this is so, but it could be that a couple spend more time cooking and preparing meals (rather than heating up a frozen dinner for one) and perhaps live in a bigger house that requires more upkeep.

missing the point?

Here's a thought, if you spend more time cleaning as a single and you marry someone who simply doesn't care as much if things are a little messy, then of course you'll spend more time cleaning as part of a couple.

Just understand that you are doing it for yourself, not your partner. If they cared they'd have been doing it as a single themselves. Maybe they'll be greatful, but you might just be stressing them out.

Consider letting a few of the details go, and relax.

You're getting too worked up.

I hear a lot of bitterness from both sides, really. Maybe I'm young and optimistic, but isn't a relationship about balance and teamwork?

Furthermore, one shouldn't rely on stereotypes, like "women go shopping all the time" or that they're lazy, or conversely that they have higher standards of cleanliness. Generalization will get you nowhere, only make you look narrowminded. Right now the tradition has just been that women work hard to keep the house clean, and I guess the cultural pressures continue to emphasize this.

But it doesn't mean it will stay that way, at least not for the younger generations. Sometimes men will be neater, sometimes women will be neater, sometimes either gender may not care, but if both in the relationship realize that something needs to get done, then there's no reason a compromise shouldn't be worked out. Even if one is doing more than the other, if it's been talked out with mutual consideration and respect and an understanding reached, there should be no reason to complain or seek out unfairness. That only causes unhappiness.

If you respect each other as equals, then equality can be acheived.

Larger Homes / Smaller Families

I am not sure what the statistics are but I am sure that the average home size in 1976 was much smaller then it is now. Larger House = More to Clean.

Plus families were larger which may or may not generate more mess, but I get the feeling there would have been a sibling or two around to help pick up some of the slack. You know...good old fashion choirs!

Different Standards

Both husbands & wives are spending more time doing housework than when they were single because they're chasing higher standards. Ever notice that married households seem neater on average than single households?

Married people have to keep everything to the highest standard acceptable to both. This has lead to larger neater households than the combined previously single households. So if the wife is more particular about bathroom neatness & husband more interested in orderly desks, they are now both required to maintain the highest standards of the other. Also as we age, many of us elect to increase our standards of cleanliness. (2 year olds are less orderly than 10 year olds are less orderly than 20 year olds are less orderly than 50 year olds etc.) This is complicated by peer-pressure. As each spouse has friends & relatives over at the household standards are pressed upwards, as each spouse may interpret varying levels of disinterest, disapproval or other societal stressors, as somehow reflective of household neatness. These increased standards may be particularly difficult to maintain for new couples adjusting to eachother & perhaps discovering that their cleaning methods are not entirely compatible with or approved of by their new spouse. The learning curve of new methods, routines & standards can frustrate their efforts & cause high levels of initial stress to the new couple.

An upward trend in standards seems consistant with another recent U of MI study showing that we find spouses more demanding as we grow old with them (see: http://www.ns.umich.edu/htdocs/releases/story.php?id=6313 ). Also historically standards for health, safety & cleanliness have moved sharply upwards (Despite romantisations of the past, Victorian England & America in the Guilded Age were horribly dangerous, dirty & unhealthy places by todays standards)

But these are averages & results of such data may be sqewed towards some excessively neat individuals, the range of housework division options & longitudinal case-studies of individuals before & during marriage could be more informative. The quantity & quality of household tasks & households maintained are likely to differ by: age at marriage, expectations of spouse, timing of first birth, wife's relative monetary earnings, educational-attainment, physical health of family members, career status, precieved control over occupation, inlaw-expectations, percieved social-status, desire for children & family income. (some of these factors were considered the current study)

The recent introduction of many labor saving devices may show that wealthier couples spend less time in housework, and hopefully as these devicesdrop in price they will ease the burdens of more families.

Deborah Kotz comment

Great points by M.S.! It seems we're becoming more perfectionistic in our tendencies and expectations. Check out the blog I wrote on this based on Alice Domar's new book Be Happy Without Being Perfect. Here's the linik.

http://www.usnews.com/blogs/on-women/2008/3/5/im-happy-without-being-perfect.html#read_more

small success

I'd be happy if he did the following:

put the clothes IN the basket, not next to it or over it

helped wash the dishes

took the clean basket of stuff from the washer area to his closet

Yes, I HAVE asked him and spoken to him and tried many ways of persuasion.

However, if these are my only complaints after 10 yrs- my marriage is 99% perfect.