Having a husband creates an extra seven hours of housework each week for women, according to a new study. For men, tying the knot saves an hour of weekly chores.
How is it possible for both of those sentences to be true? Do they mean to tell us that what unmarried men can do in an hour every week, it takes married women seven hours to do? Is it possible that the husbands are interfering, thus causing an hour's worth of chores to expand to seven?
"It's a well-known pattern," said lead researcher Frank Stafford, an economist at University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research. "Men tend to work more outside the home, while women take on more of the household labor."
Why, how dare you make such an observation, you sexist pig!
He points out individual differences among households exist. But in general, marriage means more housework for women and less for men. "And the situation gets worse for women when they have children," Stafford said.
Well, duh!
Overall, times are a' changing in the American home. In 1976, women busied
themselves with 26 weekly hours of sweeping-and-dusting work, compared with 17 hours in 2005. Men are pitching in more, more than doubling their housework
hours from six in 1976 to 13 in 2005.
Some of the reduction on the part of the women may have to do with technology. Either that, or they're saying that what it takes women 9 hours to do, men can do in seven.
Stafford analyzed time-diaries and questionnaires from a nationally representative sample of men and women over a 10-year period between 1996 and 2005. The federally-funded study showed that, compared with the single life, marriage meant more housework for both men and women.
Wait. I thought you said in the second sentence that men were saving and hour of housework every week by getting married. If both are having to do more housework than when unmarried, there’s yet another argument for staying unmarried – one that works on either sex.
"Marriage is no longer a man's path to less housework," Stafford said.
Which is just one of the many reasons some men have gone on a marriage strike.
Single guys worked the hardest around the house, trumping all age groups of married men.
Very interesting.
Hey, when are we going to see a study about how much more a married man must earn to cover living expenses – mortgage/rent, utilities, insurance, medical bills, clothing, furniture, entertainment, travel and transportation, food, birthday/anniversary/holiday and romantic gifts (including the ones bought for him), gifts for parties and showers he doesn’t want to attend, etc.?
I’m old-school. I’m happy to go out and earn to provide for my family so that my wife can take care of me, our children, and our home. I even help out around the house. But I should not be expected to divide chores evenly with my wife – those are her job. That is why she doesn’t earn income outside of the home.
*Update - radio talk show host Tom Leykis is covering this study this (5pm PST) hour. He chalks up the one hour/seven hour disparity to "six hours of her nagging you to do the chores". He also cites all of the things most women no longer have to do (car maintenance, for example) if they are married.
**Update #2 - Does the study take into account that married people tend to move into bigger homes, and thus there is more housework? It really is strange that single men, who the study says do a lot of housework, drop an hour when they marry and single women, who do less housework, add seven hours when they marry. Do they mean to imply that single women are slobs until they have someone living with them?
