Women still do more household chores than their partners
Even though we live in a new era where women have become more equal to men than ever. Gender equality in the 21st is at its best and women have, more or less, the same rights and responsibilities just like men. But when it comes to sharing household duties, it seems that women are still doing more.
Some surveys and experts tell us that traditional values are the ones still working. While the new generation of men is more likely than ever to share the household chores, there’s still a gap that makes women unsatisfied, especially when both partners work the same amount of hours and earn the same income.
In this article, we will try to tackle this issue. We will also explore what makes some chores less rewarding than others for both men and women, and why women do them.
Younger couples do seem to divide house chores better than their older counterparts.
It’s not news that the younger generations are way better at sharing household responsibilities equally (more or less). Social scientists who study to topic of gender equality have concluded that the new generation is more open-minded and egalitarian in terms of most of the gender roles. However, when it comes to domestic duties, it seems like women still take the largest, most unpleasant ones.
Millennial men do more chores than boomers. They just don’t do as much as their wives.
Millennial fathers and husbands spend more time doing housework than the older generations. A huge proportion of new fathers do childcare duties as much as their partners. But, that’s it!
Men prefer to do childcare duties over dishwashing
Intensive parenting is the norm nowadays. Fathers as much as mothers value spending time rearing children. It’s the most rewarding thing a parent can do. But when it comes to cleaning the house, men don’t find it as rewarding. And since there’s a big societal pressure on women, they end up doing all the dishwashing, cleaning, wiping, vacuuming, etc…
It seems like there’s a household duties hierarchy
Apparently, some house duties are desirable and others are a big “NOT SO MUCH FUN!”
One study has concluded that one of the most satisfying ways to share household duties for women is doing the dishwashing equally. Women are at their happiest when their partners do the dishes. When women do the dishes all the time, they tend to be very unhappy.
On the other hand, men are happy when their partners shared household financial responsibilities. They are in their unhappiest state when they do a lot of cleaning in the house.
The pleasurable duties and the NOT SO MUCH FUN ones
The duties that men do are usually garage-related and outdoorsy. Men usually take care of the yard, fix something, or something similar. Women’s duties are indoors cleaning and cooking. However, the big difference between the duties of men and the ones of women is frequency. Men’s duties are less frequent, while women’s are repeated every day, sometimes twice or trice (more or less).
Men are happy to share financial responsibility, but they don’t share household duties.
Men are happy to receive another paycheck that their wives bring, but they are not happy when they are asked to share household duties.
The explanation of social scientists tells us that the financial demands of childcaring are big; it’s a lot less demanding when couples share them. However, the old values of masculinity drive men to associate feminine values with household chores, like cleaning and cooking.
Young men are open-minded to equality with women when it comes to work because the world is demanding, and childrearing needs money. But these men are still traditional at home, not willing to (let’s say) do the dishes because it’s a female thing.
Conclusion: How to change the situation?
It seems like it’s hard to change the situation as long as society and culture still attribute cleaning the house and cooking to women. Society puts the burden of keeping a clean house upon the girls, even when they’re still young. If a house is unclean, the first to be blamed is the woman.
There are some changes that the change might start to happen when society and policymakers change some of their expectations from males and females. For example, men are not ought to work a lot more than women. Families and parents are also to be blamed for the situation. Parents should stop giving their daughters more chores than their boys.
