A University of Michigan recently released study confirms what married women have known for years. Women who marry men not only gain a man but also gain an average of seven hours more housework while men lose an hour of work.
"It's a well-known pattern," said lead researcher Frank Stafford, an economist at University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research in a Yahoo News report. "Men tend to work more outside the home, while women take on more of the household labor."
Stafford goes on to say that it only gets worse with the birth of kids. The reports even goes farther to say that with more than three kids, for instance, wives took on more of the extra work, clocking about 28 hours a week compared with husbands' 10 hours.
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 singles, marriage meant more housework for both men and women.
Seriously, did they need a study to find this out? They should of broke it down from newly married to long term marriages after the wife has had time to train the men.
Why is it not more for women? Men just don't care. I can't tell you how many times I clean out the sink after my husband has used it. If I didn't, he wouldn't ever care about the leftover hair from him shaving. And don't get me started on how hard it is to walk three feet and put something in the sink as opposed to left out on the counter. Clothes, shoo-I think he typically wore boxers for seven days until they got crusty when we first met. He did this so he wouldn't have to wash clothes.
Believe me, this study is no surprise. I remember spending countless hours going after my husband cleaning. I think well above the general seven. Over the years, I think he has had a counter effect on me. I have learned to just not care.
As for the kids, again, did we need the study? I can't explain how much laundry I do in a day since we had kids. I am told it only gets worse as they reach the teenage years. Ugh!.Not to mention the mundane repetitiveness of picking up toy after toy after toy despite threats of throwing them all away. It is never ending. And what do we do as parents? Buy them more clothes. Throw birthday parties so they get more toys. What are we thinking? Oh wait, it is the woman not thinking since she is the one cleaning it all up.
The good news is that we are doing less work than in the seventies. Women in the seventies did an average of 26 hours a week, now we do 17 hours. Most likely this is do to just not getting stuff clean and learning to leave it because we are so exhausted.
The other good news for me is that from what I have experienced and according to this study, as men begin to age they contribute more to the housework. Woohoo! I can't wait until that stage in my husband. I could use a day with no housework.
As for now, I have to go get in my extra hours for the day-off to the laundry!
