An update from the war between the sexes:
Family
Giving Credit Where It's Due: Men Do More Housework Than Women Think
The Wall Street Journal Online
By Sue Shellenbarger
Men are finally getting some credit for helping out around the house.
A new study proves for the first time that men actually do a bigger share of household chores than their wives admit. 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.
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.
The study by sociology professors Yun-Suk Lee, University of Seoul, Korea, and Linda Waite, University of Chicago, compared spouses' answers on a survey with data from an "experience sampling method." With this approach, people wear watches that beep randomly once every two hours, then write down what they're doing.
Researchers used the answers to estimate time spent during one week on chores, including washing dishes, cleaning the house, laundry, cooking, shopping, family paperwork and maintenance. They found wives not only underestimate their husbands' contribution, but overestimate their own, saying they carry 67% of the load, rather than the 61% indicated by the study.
The fact that women still do the majority of housework despite their expanded duties as breadwinners has fueled tensions in millions of homes. But many men have long insisted that they do more than their wives give them credit for. This is the first study to demonstrate it.
Bill Rogers and Joan Cummins, a Plymouth, Mich., couple, know the problem all too well. Mr. Rogers does a big chunk of the housework, including shopping, weekday cooking, yardwork and his own laundry, and Ms. Cummins admits she undervalues his role. But so many of the mundane tasks that must be done immediately fall to her, Ms. Cummins says, such as cleaning the kitchen, that she becomes resentful. "It's the everyday things that get under your skin."
When she arrived home one recent day from her job as a bank vice president, she found a dishwasher full of clean dishes needing to be put away and used cups by the sink. "How come you didn't empty the dishwasher?" she asked Mr. Rogers, who arrives home earlier from his job as an insurance agent. |
