Why Men Should Keep Up With Household Chores

By Kevin Fleming
[Relationships]
Proper sharing of household responsibilities leads to relationship harmony.  Kevin Fleming says a little housework goes a long way.
I was fortunate enough to be raised in a household where both my parents regularly shared household duties.  Whether it involved doing the dishes, cooking, cleaning or doing laundry, they always seemed to have an untold understanding about such matters.  So you can imagine that I’ve been rather perplexed by some of the complaints I have heard about such matters since entering the “real world.”  I’ve heard countless grievances from women who are cohabitating with men that loathe the guy’s lack of attention to regular household chores.  In one case, a young lady actually ended the relationship because her boyfriend didn’t do anything in regard to chores.  As we will see, gentlemen, a lack of attention to household chores can lead to a rocky relationship or worse.

Happiness Through Dishes?

Believe it or not, couples that share regular household duties are much happier than couples that segregate such duties to one partner.  A study at the University of Western Ontario indicated that the “shared roles” family model is becoming more and more prevalent in cohabitated households (married or otherwise), especially in relationships where the woman has more resources and the couple is less religious than a typical couple.  Nevertheless, the traditional family model of the man doing the brunt of the paid work and the woman doing the brunt of the unpaid work is still the norm, but this is declining.

Besides making couples generally happier, the shared roles model also helps society out as a whole.  First and foremost, it helps to promote equality amongst the sexes where laws and policy cannot touch:  the home.  Second, it helps to maximize the number of individuals in the workforce, which in turn helps to stimulate and keep a country’s economy healthy, not to mention that having both individuals working brings in more money for the household.  Finally, it leaves women better able to cope financially in case of a divorce, a breakup or the death of their spouse.

Do The Work, Get The Girl

As society advances in regard to gender roles, it is becoming more commonplace for women to evaluate the potential of their significant other in what they bring to the table in concern to household duties.  That is, if a potential live-in partner sees you as willing to take on your fair share of the household duties, they will more than likely take the leap and move in with you.  From there, if both individuals involved in the relationship continue to do their fair share of household duties, the chances of that couple getting married increase more so than couples who are more traditional in the way that they view gender roles in the household.

An Oxford economist recently released the results of a study looking at a country’s egalitarian index, which included twelve countries and 13,500 men and women between the ages of 20 and 45.  The countries that ranked at the top of the egalitarian index included (in order):  Norway, Sweden, Great Britain and the United States.  He found that women in these countries were 20 to 50 per cent more likely to be living with a man than in less egalitarian countries.  Dr. Almudena Sevilla-Sanz, the author of the study, suspects that men in egalitarian countries are more open to taking on the traditional roles of women because of public policy in the above-mentioned countries, which in turn has led to a change in social norms.

Countries that finished out of the top four in the egalitarian index and hence had less women living with men are (in order):  Northern Ireland, the Netherlands, Ireland, Spain, New Zealand, Japan, Germany, Austria and Australia.
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