A new study from the University of Michigan finds that among hetero couples, men create for their female partners an extra seven hours per week of housework, while their own chore burden decreases by an hour per week when they live with a partner. Housework is distributed even less equally after children are born.
In the past, the consensus among male bloggers writing about this problem has been that men shouldn't have to do more housework, but that women should do less. But is that realistic? Does it correspond to how people actually live? According to the Michigan study, what has actually happened since the 1970s is that women do less and men do more -- yet the inequality persists:
Overall, U.S. women do considerably less housework today than in 1976, while the amount of housework men do has increased. In 1976, women did an average of 26 hours of housework a week, compared with about 17 hours in 2005. Men did about six hours of housework a week in 1976, compared with about 13 hours in 2005.
This suggests that the overall amount of housework the typical couple does in a week has remained fairly constant over time, decreasing by just 2 hours per week in three decades. The flexible factor here isn't the amount of housework, but the distribution within couples, with men more than doubling their contribution and women cutting theirs by about a third. That's limited progress. What's needed to complete the process is an overhaul of social expectations about the relative importance of men's and women's careers and their roles in the home and with kids. And yes, I realize it will take a long time to get there. In the meantime, it's no wonder that more and more women are choosing to raise kids on their own. A male partner can be a real burden! Over a third of all American households are now single-parent families, the vast majority of them headed by a woman.
Hat tip: Feministing.
--Dana Goldstein
