Awhile back, there was a big blog argument over the distribution of domestic chores in two wage-earner households. Some thought men had to spend a lot more time doing chores so as to fairly uphold contemporary standards of cleanliness, while others thought that the actual number of chores, and indeed the standards of cleanliness, should be lowered to more realizable levels. I'm definitely in the latter group, and I think this offers some evidence for my view:
in the past century, a variety of "labor-saving" appliances have been invented and adapted by millions of people across the United States, and yet, somewhat surprisingly, hours spent on work around the house might actually be higher today than they were in 1900.
That's one rather striking conclusion in the middle of "A Century of Work and Leisure," by Valerie A. Ramey and Neville Francis. Although the data is sort of patchy, they estimate that the hours spent on housework by "non-employed women" stayed roughly constant between 1912 and the 1960s, and dipped only slightly after that. The simplest explanation here is that, back in the early 1900s, a lot of housework simply didn't get done, especially in poorer households. Women still worked around the house, but stuff remained dirty. In that case, appliances haven't saved time so much as simply allowed more cleaning to get done in a given amount of time.
In other words, housework expanded to fill the excess time, and society rapidly raised its expectations for cleanliness to ensure homemaking was a full-time job. Add in that more folks occupy large houses (McMansion's and the like) and the "chore creep" becomes all the clearer. Problem is, in households where both adults work, upholding cleanliness standards designed to fill the time of unemployed women is rather impossible. Cleanliness may be next to godliness, but a bit of dust-directed agnosticism never hurt anyone.*
*Okay, maybe some folks with allergies.
