How husbands keep their wives busy?

April 25, 2008 

I did not say that ..Times of India did. Correction - actually a study by University of Michigan says from their ongoing survey of 8000 U.S families that husbands are instrumental in keeping their wives on toes by adding all the extra chores around the house. All you voluntarily unmarried single women have one more reason to keep your status. The study has gone a step further to claim that “A wife saves men from about an hour of housework a week.”

A lot of research is conducted on topics as meaningless as this or does it really provide any value? Anyways, it provides that newspapers around the world some fodder to write about and if anything create a temporary marital discord now that the wife has a study backing her claims while the husband lies on the Lazyboy watching IPL matches? And in the end to be called a nagging wife, right?

Before you read any further, let me clear the air. I don’t go with this study nor do I think it has any relevance to the Indian context so why publish it in the first place. To start with, most Indian households have a maid to help them with the basic housework and most of us don’t have huge palatial houses with gardens that the husband takes care of the gardening, repairs around the house or car washing. You pay, you get the job done. It’s as simple as that. Moreover the study does not account for the time spent in child rearing, dropping off to school and other classes which again I believe many people these days employee governesses or full time maids (I’m told so).

I don’t know how it is with you all but at times I believe V works way harder than me as he loves taking care of Lil’ General when home - sometimes changing diapers at night, talking him out for morning walks and in general keeping him entertained while I sit on my a* mindlessly surfing. Now that’s work half done and I can’t ask for more. Times have changed. With a comfortable life and security, men of our generation are less hassled in their everyday lives than our parents’ generation and are more eager to help their spouses in child rearing which I think is quite remarkable.

Here’s the actual article as published in Times of India :

Blame your husband for those extra chores around the house

New York: For married women who can’t figure out why they always have so much housework researchers may have the answer—husbands.
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.
“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 labour.”
He points out individual differences among households exist. But in general, marriage means more housework for women and less for men. “And the situation gets worse for women when they have children,” Stafford said.
But still in the overall scene, times are 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.
That has a r to a recent study by Scott Coltrane of California Riverside University there is a direct link between the men doing householdchores and the regularity of sex and also that women were more sexually interested and affectionate towards men who contributed to cleaning.
For his study, 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, marriage meant more housework for both men and women.
“Marriage is no longer a man’s path to less housework,” Stafford said.
He found that single women in their 20s and 30s did the least amount of housework, at about 12 hours a week. Married women in their 60 and 70s did nearly twice that amount, while women with more than three children spent 28 hours a week cleaning, cooking and washing. AGENCIES

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