A newly released study looks at the amount of house work done by men and women in different living situations. Like most of these surveys, the data is based on interviews and on diaries kept by men and women. The most remarkable results are reported in a press release from the University of Michigan [Exactly how much housework does a husband create?].
Here's how they describe the data collection process.
For the study, researchers analyzed data from time diaries, considered the most accurate way to assess how people spend their time. They supplemented the analysis with data from questionnaires asking both men and women to recall how much time they spent on basic housework in an average week, including time spent cooking, cleaning and doing other basic work around the house. Excluded from these "core" housework hours were tasks like gardening, home repairs, or washing the car.Assuming that this is a reliable way of accessing workload, the study published a chart showing the amount of housework done by maried and single men and women.
The 2005 results show that when women get married they end up doing 7 hours more housework per week but when men get married they end up doing 8 hours more housework per week. The take-home message is clear. Women are a lot more costly than men. Women do more to mess up a house than men do.
Pay attention, men. It may not be worth the effort to get married.
The title of the press release is interesting: Exactly how much housework does a husband create?. Here are the opening paragraphs.
ANN ARBOR, Mich.---Having a husband creates an extra seven hours a week of housework for women, according to a University of Michigan study of a nationally representative sample of U.S. families.Is it just me or does there seem to be a disconnect between the statements in the press release and the chart that's published on the same page?
For men, the picture is very different: A wife saves men from about an hour of housework a week.
The findings are part of a detailed study of housework trends, based on 2005 time-diary data from the federally-funded Panel Study of Income Dynamics, conducted since 1968 at the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR).
It's got a label of "humor" so I'm still not sure if it's an April Fool joke?
ReplyDeleteBut anyway, the strongest correlation is with age, not with sex.
In this household, if I did seven hours fewer then it would be negative :)
Probably you were wondering, what is recent US presidential candidate Mike Huckabee up to these days?
ReplyDeleteCould this effect have something to do with women's higher standards of hygiene and their 'encouraging' their husbands to clean up after themselves?
ReplyDeleteAdmittedly, this was the case with me.
There are two things going on. First, the balance shifts. Men do more of the housework in married households than predicted by the ration of housework done by single men and women.
ReplyDeleteSecond, more housework is done. The total amount of housework done in married households is substantially higher than twice the average amount of work done in single households.
This might be because the married households are much more likely to also include children. I can't dig deeply into the data source to find out whether it is only for married households without children.
Second, more housework is done. The total amount of housework done in married households is substantially higher than twice the average amount of work done in single households.
ReplyDeleteThis is highly congruent with my experiences. I do next to zero housework beyond what is required for me to walk out of my house looking presentable and smelling OK, except if I think there is a possibility that a woman will enter my house in the near future. Then I clean, scrub, vacuum, fold, etc. Were I living with a woman all the time, I expect I would (be forced to) do more housework all the time.
I've never had the courage to ask a woman if the inverse situation is also true, i.e. if they only clean before myself or another man is due to arrive.
thebrummel: no.
ReplyDeleteHusband and I (no children) both HATE housework, and are fairly immune to clutter. We have a housekeeping service come in every other week to deal with the worst of the dirt. The most beneficial aspect of this: we need to get the clutter under control so they can clean. Without them, one or both of us would have been lost in a sea of paper years ago.
The thing that jumps out from the graph is twofold, good news/bad news:
ReplyDeleteBad news is that people seem to have less time for cleaning; I doubt that cleaning has actually become all that much easier over the past 30 years, but maybe it did.
Good news is that married men are picking up the slack quite a lot compared to their counterparts a few decades ago.
Of course Larry has framed this slightly differently. :)
I wonder what is meant by housework. I do know that I have much more time when my wife is away for an extended trip.
ReplyDeleteIMHO, much of what she considers "necessary" I find "optional" and "unnecessary". :-)