That’s according to the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, a federally funded, diary-based study of family dynamics conducted by the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research. They’ve been tracking household labor since 1968.
The latest analysis comes from time-diary data from 2005, which shows that some traditional family values remain true. Men work more outside the home and women work more at home. Children change things, too. And time has changed the situation as well.
In general, the number of hours spent each week on housework in the US since 1976 has dropped for women but has increased for men. In 1976, women spent about 26 hours cleaning house each week but the hours dropped to about 17 in 2005. Men claimed six hours of housework in 1976 but they did about 13 in 2005. For the purpose of the study, housework is defined as cooking, cleaning, and other basic work around the house. Washing the car, gardening, and household repairs are not considered housework.
For men and women alike, marriage generates more housework today than bachelorhood. Single women in the twenty- to thirty-something age range do about 12 hours of housework each week these days while married women in their 60s and 70s do about 21 hours. Younger men do less housework than older men, too, but the bachelors of any age do more housework than married men.
Children, as can be expected, alter the workload dramatically. Married mothers with three or more children average 28 hours of housework each while their fathers report only 10 hours of weekly household labor.
So, if a bride gains seven extra hours of housework each week, how does marriage affect the household workload of her spouse? It’s reduced by about an hour from his bachelor days.
Source: University of Michigan
- Based on your personal experiences, would you agree with these findings?
What a bunch of made up bs. So what’s your plan..a lesbian world?
I am not married but when i get married i wanted my wives to do good work at home they must cook well and do the cleanings etc while i am doing my work outsied of home traditionaly every wife should take care her home and her kids then i would reduce the beating.
I do not like my wives to be outside of the room i am a man and i must get women who take care their husbands and well as their children.
Fuzzy math women 7 more men 1 less
Sounds like someone not using the same clock Metric?
“Washing the car, gardening, and household repairs are not considered housework.”
And federally funded ‘studies’ such as this are not science.
no matter what we do they will always pick on us
I wouldn’t be surprised if the study was conducted by women
“Single women in the twenty- to thirty-something age range do about 12 hours of housework each week” I find that hard to beleive!
And, I live with a man, he doesn’t clean.. so I just ignore his mess and I’m looking to move out. I expect a man to do 50% of the chores UNLESS I’m not working full time. Or unless he wants to pay me $500 a week for my maid services.
I’m married and work as a professional outside the home. We’re DINKs with a dog. It does seem like my husband creates extra housework. He throw stuff (papers, mail, clothes, coins) all over the place and I find myself following him around and picking up after him. The mess doesn’t bother him, but it bugs me something terrible. I mention it to him, but do not want to be a nag about it. I can’t seem to relax unless the house is neat, clean and organized. I guess its my problem. Perhaps the solution would be for me to get comfortable in the chaos or for him to respect my need for cleanliness and neatness (perhaps he would stop asking me if I’ve seen his favorite cuff links?), or maybe we should hire a butler! Does anyone know a good butler?
“Fuzzy math women 7 more men 1 less
Sounds like someone not using the same clock Metric?”
The article states that the total amount of housework increases in marriage, so the numbers are showing the allocation of 6 additional hours
Hmm, cutting the grass, shoveling snow, repairing faucets building stone retaining walls, snaking out clogged drains, repairing toilets, cleaning out gutters, maintenance of mowers and snowblowers, and all of the other things considered “mens” work are not considered “house work”. Like most University of Michigan studies, this one has serious flaws and biases. If a man works 8 hours a day, plus 1 hour drive time to and from work and does so 5 days a week, then that time is devoted to supporting his wife and family.
The story goes a long way towards explaining why I no longer allow women into my life. American women are spoiled brats and I am not their “penis with a paycheck attached”.
If it makes anybody feel better I have to work an extra 20 so she doesn’t have to work
Bottom line men– if your wife works full time, like you, get off your lazy asses and do your 50% of the housework. Its not rocket science.
i do pretty much all the housework and work 10 to 11 hours a day….i know quite a few guys like me….my fiance is pregnant so i try to make it as easy as possible for her. this study is b.s.
Wow, the headline and verbiage in this article are pathetically written. No explanation on what the 7 extra hours come from. In fact, the data that talks about men doing more housework and women doing less (presumably as demographics change). So then is it that men have been taking on more of the housework burden over time, which completely contradicts the title. So what are you saying. Bottom line…
LEARN TO WRITE!!!
i agree that american women are sometimes spoiled by their men (like rick
)… they should try to live in eastern europe where i come from, there it’s taken for granted that women do everything around the house and children plus they are expected to take care of themselves and look great, which is all fine, the problem is they are not appreciated even if they do all that. that’s why i married an american guy 
I’m currently separated from my husband because of this… We both work full-time and our 3 sons between the ages of 16 – 19 live at home… ever since they turned 15 they stopped doing chores and I ended up picking up the slack for ALL of the men in the house… laundry, grocery shopping, cooking, dishes, etc… I am the one who figures out how to pay the bills, makes all the calls to get things done, organizes everything.. while all the men in the house come home after work or school and sit in front of the TV and the computer playing games… I’m so sick and tired of selfish, self-centered men who think women are their slaves… I stopped cooking and cleaning and even ignored him in the bedroom… what do I get for my boycott? he started cheating on me and we separated… men suck and I wish I was born a lesbian….
“… I’m so sick and tired of selfish, self-centered men who think women are their slaves… I stopped cooking and cleaning and even ignored him in the bedroom… what do I get for my boycott? he started cheating on me and we separated…”
LOL gee whiz Christine – what a jerk! As soon as you stop making any contribution whatsoever to the household, the rat leaves you! Men suck! With your diligent hypothesis, you should really send your finding to Science Magazine. It certainly has as much merit as the article above.
FWIW, I wish I were born a lesbian too – chicks get SO many more chicks than I do..:*(..But at least I live my life without that constant whining sound…what IS that?
Women never pay for dates, never have been drafted into the military, never share their money with men but spend it on themselves for such foolish items like breast implants, botox injections and beauty spa treatments. Women demand the same pay as men, but turn to men for the answers when they don’t know something or need help, yet rush out the door at 5:00 and leave the men to work overtime to figure out the solutions to problems. Women shun responsibility like the plague. They expect men to pay for everything, take half or more in in a divorce — far more than they contributed. And on top of all that, they whine about house work. By the way, the figures in the article are conveniently mislleading! Naturally, older women (and men) spend more time cleaning house (or doing other chores, purposely obmitted from the definition of house work because they have and still are being done by men), because they move slower, naturally!
When women pay the same dues as men, when women know as much as men, when women can problem solve as well as men, when women take the same risk as men, when when women do the same work as men, when women carry the same responsibliity as men, when women die in battle according to their ratio of females in our population…, then and only then do women have the right to say anything… In the mean time, get busy doing something besides whining.
Oh get over yourself Hank. Women leave at 5:00 because they’re smart enough to get their work done on time. Housework has nothing to do with anything you listed, it’s not something that’s “owed” to you just because you’ve had a harder life. Stop thinking about what you get in return and quit your own damn whining.
My parents are married 45 years and my mother takes pride in being a homemaker and I commend her for it. My Dad didn’t help with the housework much growing up but he worked 3 jobs to put food on the table and keep a roof over our heads. At times I thought my mom pampered him way too much but if it works for them who am I to say it’s not right. Now that my dad is retired he does all the cooking and waits on my mom and I think it’s adorable and they act like newlyweds all the time. All my moms pampering of him over the years is now paying off. My husband and I are coming up on 18 years in May. And my husband has always helped around the house because he was trained by his parents to do so. As for Christine you can’t let 20 yrs go by and expect change like that instantly it has to be learned. I’m not saying your husband’s cheating wasn’t wrong, but you shutting him out of the bedroom wasn’t right eighter. If you still love him go to marriage counseling and work things out. No man wants to live with a women who complains and whines all the time.
Inaccurate sensationalist headline…check.
Excluding chores men do most of the time…check.
The bottom line is this study doesn’t mean anything. If you’re happy with your spouse and you do all the chores, that’s great. If you’re not happy doing all the chores, then communicate. And I don’t mean communicate by not having with sex with your spouse, I mean talk to them.
Props to Donna, she seems to be the only person commenting who has their head on straight.
Looks like one feminist bull**** story…
And so this story isn’t hatred, bias, prejudice, discrimination, none of that, right???
This study was obviously done by a bunch of whining liberal Clintonites. The angry women are at it again!
As Hillary Clinton has said on numerous occassions, “when I’m in the White House”, we are going to change the rules”! Well, ladies, she ain’t going to make it to the White House, thank god!
As for me, keep up the good work of taking care of the outside jobs, washing the car, making repairs and working your full-time job. If you have a sudden urge to help the little lady by doing some laundry and vaccuming, and, yes, even a little dusting from time to time, good for you. You ladies who work full time jobs and take care of the household chores, we men are all proud of you and we will remember you on Mothers Day with cards, flowers and if you are really good, you might get something a little more expensive.
In the meantime, quite your whining!
I agree that the headline was sensationalist, but it is still rare to find a husband who will share the workload at home. When I was married, as well as working outside the home, cooking, birthing babies, etc. I also mowed the yard, took the car to the mechanic and other “man” stuff, so it didn’t matter whether the article “counted” that as housework. Guess what? I finally divorced him. He never did understand why.
Am I someone men hate to be around? Hardly. Haven’t figured it out yet, but at this age I am having to fight them off. I have been wined and dined and taken on fancy vacations and presented with jewelry. They think I’m clever, sexy and good company. Even THEIR friends want to be remembered to me.
But only one is a serious option in my eyes.
He likes to help around the house. We work like partners, not boss and subordinate. Got that fellas??
Didn’t think so. Your loss. There are many women out there like me. You just won’t be able to hold on to one of them.
I believe in fairness. I also believe that one should not be biased or hypocritical. Let’s add up all the hours of worked away from home and include the hours of work around the house, not just inside the house. Also, grease is grease; add the hours of car maintenance and home repair maintenance. To omit these would lead to a bias study.
I think there is a growing resentment between men and women. Both sides believe the other to have unfair advantage of some kind. Here is my take.
- Women use withholding sex to dominate a relationship. Not fair
- Men do not clean up after themselves. Not good
- Men chores / womens work – combine into one then divide into half.
I work all day, come home, clean house, cook for the two of us, do dishes, repair things, do the laundry, etc… and oh yeah, I’m a man, too. I do about 95% of any of the work around the house. ‘Cause I do it best.
I wonder how many taxpayer dollars went into this misandric study.
Household maintenance, auto repair and the like aren’t considered housework?
Maybe so, but these things still need to be done and therefore, they are a valuable contribution.
This lazy man built the house his lovely (and I mean that) wife now keeps clean. This lazy man tackles every automotive job to save money so she won’t have to work outside the home, and I’d still do it even if she had a paycheck just so the money would go further. I’ll tell you what though;there were times when I would have gladly traded wrestling a transmission for pushing a vacuum cleaner.
Wow, there is a lot of bitterness here on both sides! Here’s an idea, why not respect each other, help each other, stop being selfish, and take the “men’s role” and “womens role ” out of the equation. Who cares who washes the floor, fixes the car, cooks dinner, or mows the lawn. Get your heads out of 1950, it’s 2008 and household and family responsibility’s should be shared by both people 50/50. For goodness sake people, it’s just a stupid article, grow up!
The article is based on self-reported time doing housework. Self reporting is the most inaccurate way to observe behavior. I trust this data about as far as I can throw my husband after he leaves his socks on the floor
Who cares how much “housework” people do?? That is not the government’s or taxpayers business. It is up to each houshold to work out which chores are necessary (vs. optional) and how chores should be divied up. The real shame is that this study was federally funded, which means it was paid for by our tax dollars.
call me old fashioned but marriage is a partnership therefore the chores should be divvied up equally. find your strengths, weaknesses. how hard can this be? the more who share in the work makes more time for fun stuff – duh!! #1hubby can fold clothes while watching the t v; etc, in fact there is nothing good on the tv so turn it off and talk while doing the chores together.
#2 learn something new – like how to do dishes, laundry, duh, and I think gardening and so on should be included…the outside should be as nice as the inside; #3 how hard is it to clean the bathroom?? vacuum, mop floors, jmho (just my humble opinion)
my husband is from eastern europe and he doesn’t do one thing in the house. He thinks that everything is my job and complains when it’s not done to his standard.At the moment he is only working 2 days a week and will sit at the computer the other 5 days playing games from when he gets up to when he goes to bed, we have 4 children and I do everything inc cleaning 2 cars cutting both lawns and all housework and cooking etc..
I cannot wait to learn to read more of this very good topic. So much today Ive never even idea of. You sure did put a different twist on something that Ive heard so much about. I dont believe Ive actually read whatever does this subject of the same quality justice as you merely did.