Men may create more housework
Because of one of my last columns ‘ flu season and me wishing I was a man ‘ I’ve been accused of taking a stab at men. I may have, but the jury is still out on that one. If you didn’t like that one, don’t read this one.
The other day I heard that men create more housework for women. A new study suggests that having a husband creates seven extra hours of housework for a woman each week. However, the amount of housework decreased by one hour per week for a man.
My first thought was ‘that’s true’ and I began to wonder why women don’t stay single. After giving it some thought, I can’t understand the numbers generated from the study. Here’s my problem:
If a woman’s housework increases by seven hours each week, shouldn’t a man’s housework decrease by seven? If a man’s decreases by one, shouldn’t a woman’s increase by one?
If they had children, the amount of housework increases with each child. The numbers might then make sense to me. Since there was no mention of children, these numbers made no sense.
Could it be, and I’m just throwing this out there for the purpose of discussion, that the study suggests that men not only do less housework but get messier when they are married?
It was suggested that men do less because they don’t want to hear a woman tell them they didn’t do that right, they didn’t do this right, or this is how to do it right. If you guessed this statement came from a man, you are right.
One woman suggested that women bring the extra work load on themselves by allowing men to slack. Instead of pointing out that he isn’t doing his share, we do it for him. Although I resemble this remark, it still doesn’t explain the problem with the numbers.
Yes, I said ‘resemble’ instead of ‘resent’ in the last statement. Let’s face it women, most of us resemble this remark. Most of us have been doing housework for a long time. Because of this we have developed our own way of doing things and most of us want things just so.
I, for instance, can’t stand to wash socks with anything else. Socks go on the feet, so they don’t go in with anything else. When it comes to cooking meat, hands must be washed every time it is touched and it must be cooked completely. When it comes to vegetables, they have to be washed before eaten ‘ including lettuce honey.
If he can’t do certain things the way I like them, I would prefer to do it myself. More than that, if he has to go to work the next day and I notice his work clothes are dirty, I’ll wash and dry them. What I should have done was remind him that they are dirty and let him worry about it. So, I resemble that remark by bringing that extra work upon myself.
Back to the numbers. Could it be that women want to be more tidy while living with a man? I guess that could be true when it comes to some women. This could account for some of the discrepancy.
Because statistics can be made to say just about anything, maybe these numbers aren’t showing me the whole picture. So, I tried to find out where the numbers came from, what kind of test was used to arrive at the numbers, and how many people were involved in the study. However, I had no luck.
With only these numbers to go by, I guess I’ll never know why there is such a large discrepancy in these reported numbers. I once heard that marriage is good for a man and bad for a woman. With numbers like these, the statement might be true.
On the other hand, if women are doing so much more of the housework, who is really to blame ‘ men for not doing more or women for voluntarily picking up the slack?