What Women Already Knew

[Cherub]

Men Create More Housework for Women

LiveScience Staff (http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/livescience/sc_livescience/byline/mencreatemorehouseworkforwomen/26972137/SIG=121vpfog1/*http://www.livescience.com/php/contactus/author.php?r=editorial)

LiveScience.com (http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/livescience/sc_livescience/byline/mencreatemorehouseworkforwomen/26972137/SIG=10sog4vj6/*http://www.livescience.com) Fri Apr 4, 11:05 AM ET

Having a husband creates an extra seven hours of housework each week for women, according to a new study. For men, tying the knot saves an hour of weekly chores.

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"It's a well-known pattern," said lead researcher Frank Stafford, an economist at University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research. "Men tend to work more outside the home, while women take on more of the household labor."
He points out individual differences among households exist. But in general, marriage means more housework (http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/livescience/sc_livescience/storytext/mencreatemorehouseworkforwomen/26972137/SIG=120lm446c/*http://www.livescience.com/health/070727_household_chores.html) for women and less for men. "And the situation gets worse for women when they have children," Stafford said.
Overall, times are a' changing in the American home. In 1976, women busied themselves with 26 weekly hours of sweeping-and-dusting work, compared with 17 hours in 2005. Men are pitching in more, more than doubling their housework hours from six in 1976 to 13 in 2005.
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 single life (http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/livescience/sc_livescience/storytext/mencreatemorehouseworkforwomen/26972137/SIG=11ts9c658/*http://www.livescience.com/health/070829_men_housework.html), marriage meant more housework for both men and women.
"Marriage is no longer a man's path to less housework," Stafford said.
Single women in their 20s and 30s did the least housework, about 12 weekly hours, while married women (http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/livescience/sc_livescience/storytext/mencreatemorehouseworkforwomen/26972137/SIG=11qg2bu5l/*http://www.livescience.com/health/070711_woman_boss.html) in their 60s and 70s did the most - about 21 hours a week.
Men showed a somewhat different pattern, with older men picking up the broom more often than younger men. Single guys worked the hardest around the house, trumping all age groups of married men.
Having kids boosts house chores even further. 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.
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[Scotto]

Sorry I went to boyfriend school, cooking, cleaning, laundry, driving the kids..... my wife doesn't have the time to do it all so I have to do my part. I can't be alone???
To be fair, she works full time with real bad drive both ways. My job is a couple minutes away.

[Harrison]

Sorry I went to boyfriend school, cooking, cleaning, laundry, driving the kids..... my wife doesn't have the time to do it all so I have to do my part. I can't be alone???
To be fair, she works full time with real bad drive both ways. My job is a couple minutes away.

Scotto,

You are to be commended for doing your fair share! Unfortunately, too many look at marriage (or a live-in boyfriend/girlfriend) as a signal that they can just sit back and someone will take care of them.

[Scotto]

Scotto,

You are to be commended for doing your fair share! Unfortunately, too many look at marriage (or a live-in boyfriend/girlfriend) as a signal that they can just sit back and someone will take care of them.
How long will that last before the relationship becomes unbearable?
It doesn't take much to pick up after your self and do few household chores.

[LPTaxpayer]

In my opinion, I do believe that how we act with significant others depends upon how we were raised. If our mother picked up after us and everything else, we have been given this example to mold into our adult lives. On the other hand, if we had do assume responsibilities of daily living while growning up, we are more likely to assist the other person in our lives (as we mature into adults).

What I don't get is what happened when we were taught better as a child, but turn back into that spoiled child as an adult. (This could be applied to either or both sexes.)