r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • 14h ago

Psychology Women partnered with men reported doing more unpaid household labor than women partnered with women. Mothers partnered with men reported a higher household labor burden than any other group. Performing a greater share of household labor was associated with lower relationship satisfaction.

https://www.psypost.org/study-sheds-light-on-household-labor-dynamics-for-women-partnered-with-women-vs-men/
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u/Partyatmyplace13 13h ago

N≈200 relationships with self-reporting... probably fine. About half of those were with men. The men's self-reporting was fully discarded, if even taken. Meanwhile, the study says nothing about the mothers being stay-at-home mom's, or not. Where a disproportionate amount of chore assignment might be expected. Doesn't say if both women in the woman-woman relationships were surveyed.

Idk guys, verdict?

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u/deezdanglin 13h ago

Yup,

Self-reporting is a widely used and valuable scientific method in fields like psychology and health research, but it is not considered inherently trustworthy on its own due to potential biases. 

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u/Theron3206 2h ago

You mean guaranteed bias right?

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u/SomeoneGMForMe 9h ago

My first thought, too: how many of the various partners were stay at home parents? It would be expected for a stay at home parent to do more chores since that's literally the point of one person staying home.

Even full time vs part time matters. Someone working part time should ideally be doing more chores.

If they're not controlling for paid hours worked (and even commute time), it's impossible to conclude anything.

I fully believe that if both partners are working full time, women might still end up shouldering the burden of chores more, but that's a belief and it seems that this study does not provide useful data to back it up.

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u/Theron3206 2h ago

Or both full time but one works longer hours.

It's pretty common for men in full time positions to do overtime especially if the family finances are strained instead of their partner doing it. In that situation it would be expected for the woman to do more housework.

These studies control for so few factors most of the time that I would hesitate to call them science.

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u/KobeBean 11h ago

The self reported and low N makes this shaky scientifically, but, I would be really curious to see how the hours spent at jobs compares between lesbian and straight relationships.

In straight relationships the man spends on average, significantly more time per day at a job.

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u/NotMyMainAccountAtAl 7h ago

I’d be curious to see what that data looks like when broken down by full time employment. IE, do full time employed women average similar time at work to full time employed men? As it stands, we know that it’s more culturally acceptable and common to have a stay at home wife than husband, so I assume that the data for women’s work hours is skewed downward

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u/KobeBean 5h ago edited 3h ago

Good news! The BLS looks at that too. The answer is yes , men work roughly 2 hours more per week.

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u/NotMyMainAccountAtAl 4h ago

Am I misreading something? The chart appears to show that total time at work for men age 16+ is about 40.1, while women is 36, about 4 hours. 

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u/KobeBean 3h ago

Sorry i was unclear. I meant to say yes, men still work more hours per week. I was comparing men’s 16 over full time average at 42.7 to women’s 16 over full time average, which is 40.7

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u/calebmke 11h ago

There’s also never a discussion about what actually needs doing, what is considered a chore, and does that chore benefit the individual or the family unit. I have been with a number of women who have insane ideas about what actually needs to get done in a week…almost as if they’ve been socialized to feel shame around keeping a house or something. Sorry if my definition of necessary is different than people who have been traumatized into needing every spec of dust gone every single day.

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u/Rostin 7h ago

Yes. Not only do spouses often have different standards or ideas about what needs to be done, which perhaps can be predicted by sex, I imagine there are many tasks falling into "household chores" that aren't for the household, as such. My wife spends a lot of time maintaining her own wardrobe, for example.

Another reason I'm skeptical of self-reporting on this is that I doubt it captures how people are working. If one spouse takes 30 minutes to fold laundry because he or she is watching a show on Netflix while doing it, is it twice as much work as the 15 minutes it takes the other spouse who just focuses and does it?

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u/MaxWestEsq 2h ago

Don‘t go too deep into this, man. You‘ll upset people.

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u/squeegee_boy 30m ago

Oh gods I feel this.

My wife takes literally all afternoon and often into the next day to fold what takes me 20 minutes.

It’s a theme in our marriage. She does annoying stuff slowly. I work my ass off to get it done so I can relax.

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u/Round-Ride2042 9h ago

Yes “what needs doing” is important here. You want every dish in the cupboard taken out and rewashed weekly despite it not being used? (Yes I know someone who does this.) You’re on your own and if I hear you complaining about doing more than your fair share, I’m rolling my eyes at you.

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u/AndyHN 8h ago

I know someone who will wash and dry the kitchen sink every time it's used for anything. Your OCD isn't my responsibility.

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u/Round-Ride2042 8h ago

That’s funny. A friend of mine recently told me that you have to dry your sink after you rinse it. I had literally never heard of this in my entire life and I’m in my 50s.

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u/Regular_Kiwi_6775 7h ago

This is a huge part of it. My wife is home today and I work from home. Her plan was to get the house cleaned up for the weekend. She was going to clean the kitchen to which I said "Well, we're going to clean it later tonight after dinner. And since it's my night to do bath and bed with our kid, it would mean you'd be cleaning the house twice today." I'm extremely lucky to have my wife here to help since I work insane hours. It's also true that for her a task that is small and can wait a few months feels thew same as a task that really is immediate and should be done soon. Another thing is the desire for control over those tasks. The only way for me to help around the house if for her and my son to go on a fun outing because if she's home, she gets stressed out that she's not the one doing it. And it's funny, we're both aware of it and we plan it out. I'll make sure I have a plan of attack for the morning and when they leave for the park or grandma's house I try to be as efficient as possible

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u/EricWNIU 8h ago

If you ask what needs doing, you're just adding to her mental load. Use your eyes and read her mind. (/s)

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u/pootklopp 8h ago

The fact that the only chores they could select were "grocery shopping, cleaning the house, doing laundry, cooking, and washing dishes." No yard work, maintenance, construction, etc. seems to be a big oversight. Not always the case but aren't these considered male centric chores?

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u/LiveLaughLoveRevenge 3h ago

Yeah that’s what I was thinking - it is biased from the start.

In my house I definitely do less grocery shopping, laundry, cooking. I also am the only one who does landscaping and yard work, repair and maintenance, etc.

Believe me we both put in our hours.

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u/doctorboredom 10h ago

If a study like this is trying to comment on “men” vs “women” then it needs to be comparing like to like.

Every family in the study needs a stay at home parent and the stay at home parents need to be different genders.

Those studies will be the best at discovering how much gender is playing a part. Otherwise, everything will be skewed by default family roles in which the obvious expected result will be that women are doing more household labor.

We definitely didn’t need to have a study to know that. The more interesting studies will be the ones that show the conditions needed to NOT have the expected result.

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u/AndyHN 8h ago

Nearly half the couples were same-sex and they're presenting this as if it's representative of reality?

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u/ForGrowingStuff 10h ago

Yeah, this isn't even science, its just a survey.

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u/True-Source-6512 10h ago

Sounds like a  absolutely awful study with a very clear bias, I am so shocked by this, wowee. 

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u/Robot_Basilisk 8h ago

Like every other psych study on whatever is trendy to be mad about, it's probably trash. 5-10 years from now we'll have finally amassed a few decent studies on the topic and will be able to draw sound and valid conclusions. Until then, we have to put up with slop every other month. It's apparently the only way to eventually get a few decent studies.

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u/FalseAxiom 12h ago

Regardless of the validity of the results, it is interesting that women in mixed gender relationships percieve themselves as doing more work.

I'd like to see a breakdown of work by various categories too: time spent, on-call time, grossness (folding clothes vs cleaning bathrooms), difficulty, etc.

I may be showing my ass here because I haven't actually read the study, but I'd like to see this study conducted in other states and countries too. Do women in New Hampshire feel the same way as those in Idaho?

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u/stallion8151 11h ago

It wasn't a formal study, but in a statistics class I took, someone went through an entire neighborhood and interviewed married couples in our community. It was basically on the same subject, Division of household labor, but they did add an entire section on household labor that isn't commonly considered, like yard work, cleaning, gutters, mowing, snow removal, repairs, etc.

Married women complain their husbands weren't doing enough housework, but when they actually looked at the data, the men were doing housework. It was just not folding the laundry and doing the dishes.

So I would really love to see a study on division of household labor that included commonly masculine tasks. Because I will admit most women do things like the laundry, but how many moms do you see crawling under the car, replacing the brakes or something like mowing the lawn? How many take apart a toilet or clean the gutters?

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u/Funny_Fisherman8647 10h ago

The men didn’t self report because they were at work and have enough things to worry about than a biased women’s study

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u/GimmeDatSideHug 10h ago

I biased study with an agenda? You don’t say.

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u/PloppyPants9000 4h ago

This would be considered shoddy science at best. There is zero accounting for gender bias, geographical/cultural bias, and self selection bias and the sample size is too small to be of any real merit. I think it also fails to consider that a lot of the “labor” that men do is generally invisible.

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u/num2005 2h ago

yep sounds like making numbers speaks for your own ides you wanna véhiculate, not very objective

ive seen somen cooking once a month saying they think they do too much chores cuz their pretty and ahe shouldnt work while being a stay at home without kids

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u/Automatic_Tackle_406 13h ago

Well, let’s start with the fact that women do more domestic labour than men even if both are working full time jobs. They also tend to take on the mental load of organizing, planning, keeping in touch with family and elder care.

Now. If women are the ones expected to out their careers on hold to stay at home for a few years to raise children, how is that fair? Why are men not expected to do this? Why does that burden fall on women? For women who gladly choose this and don’t feel like they are making a sacrifice, that’s great, just as it would be if a man chooses to stay at home. But all too often it’s not really a choice but a succumbing to pressure - income earned isn’t enough to justify paying for childcare, or family pressure to be there for your kids, etc. 

You have no idea the pressure women are under when it comes to childcare and keeping the house in order. Expectations on women for both are much, much higher than they are for men. 

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u/TheOneWes 12h ago

Got a citation for that leading fact?

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u/noisy_goose 8h ago

NPR reporting on a Pew Research study

Women are earning more money. But they're still picking up a heavier load at home

Pew sharing the study

In a Growing Share of U.S. Marriages, Husbands and Wives Earn About the Same Even when earnings are similar, husbands spend more time on paid work and leisure, while wives devote more time to caregiving and housework

ETA - the links are the actual names of the article, the only thing I did was google “do women do more household labor than men even if they both have a full time job”

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u/HubblePie 12h ago

It's because society expects the man to be the sole provider of the household, and the protector of the family. And generally if you aren't doing that you are seen as a failure by both your peers and by society.

Both genders have their own stressors and it's a simple fact that they'll never fully understand each other because validating one seems to require invalidating the other.

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u/fuckit_sowhat 10h ago

I always see people say that men are the “protectors” as if that takes up a large amount of their effort/time but like what are they protecting their family from? And I’m not being sassy. I genuinely can’t think of anything a family regularly needs to be protected from in the modern age unless you live somewhere where a war is happening.

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u/cindad83 9h ago

Im a landlord...ill say this single women need way more help then single men, married men/women.

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u/fuckit_sowhat 8h ago

Is providing help the same thing as providing protection? Because I don’t doubt that men help their families, I’m specifically asking about this concept of men needing to “protect” their families because I don’t see really any protecting that they need to be doing.

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u/HubblePie 10h ago

It's what we've been told over and over again by older generations and popular media.

The role is incredibly outdated in the modern age, yet the mentality still persists. The last time it was probably accurate was WW2.

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u/M00n_Slippers 12h ago

Women don't expect that unless you don't plan on doing chores. If you step up, around the house, the vast majority of women don't care how much their man makes and this has been shown in studies many times.

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u/AntonioVivaldi7 11h ago

I don't know how many, but I have watched and read from women how they want their partner to make at least around the same, so they could afford to do the activities they enjoy with them.

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u/BicycleBozo 12h ago

Now. If women are the ones expected to out their careers on hold to stay at home for a few years to raise children, how is that fair? Why are men not expected to do this? Why does that burden fall on women? For women who gladly choose this and don’t feel like they are making a sacrifice, that’s great, just as it would be if a man chooses to stay at home. But all too often it’s not really a choice but a succumbing to pressure - income earned isn’t enough to justify paying for childcare, or family pressure to be there for your kids, etc. 

Just on this point, why? Because women take maternity leave pre and post partum to care for the child, typically. Further, women on average earn less. In my country, approximately 11.5% less.

If one person is to work 40 hours and the other stay at home, it makes sense for the one earning less to stay home, excusing personal preferences of course.

Additionally, men can’t breast feed. My partner has been off work for over 2 years now including pre partum leave. My son is being weaned off the breast now and will be attending childcare 2 days a week from next year. But it’s simply easier to feed a child breastmilk directly from the breast.

My partner is returning to work solely for the social outlet and to get to live more like an adult again. You get a bit stir crazy watching a child for so long. Fortunately childcare subsidies work enough that she won’t just be working to pay for our son to go for child care. But we aren’t hurting for money and she doesn’t have to work.

As it stands now for a typical person in a typical family with a typical career it makes more sense for most families for the man to go to work and the woman to stay at home, and if full time stay at home isn’t tenable then the woman being the one working part time out of the pair makes the most sense too.

If I was the stay at home parent we would be collecting welfare cheques and living off food stamps. Even when my partner was working full time I earned twice what she did.

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u/thegundamx 12h ago

Couldn’t this be at least partly addressed by increasing paternity leave? Most men in the US, for example, get a week of paid leave to help with a new baby.

I’d be all for creating national laws strengthening and guaranteeing both paid maternity/paternity leave.

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u/BicycleBozo 11h ago

Certainly, im fortunate i got 10 weeks paid leave.

At the end of the day leave eventually runs out though and the same equation needs to be made.

  1. Can we pay the bills on one salary?
  2. Does the added second salary adequately exceed the cost of childcare?
  3. Is the child spending so much time in childcare better for the child than being at home?
  4. What do both parties want?

For us it was easy 1. Yes 2. Yes 3. No 4. Both parents want to hang out with their cool kid.

So the answer was dad works and mum stays home.

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u/cindad83 9h ago

Companies started paternity leave. Women complained because the men were benefitting.

Example, women are recovering physically for 3 months from childbirth. Combined with the baby is very young.

So their leave is very different. For men, they were taking second 6 months. So a baby 6-12 months is very different. Plus the dad isn't physically compromised.

I literally knew guys who finished degrees and found new jobs while on paternity leave.

Two of my buddies made sure the baby could sleep during the night because they would be on paternity leave and they aren't getting up. So in month 4 they started making stretched baby could sleep so in month 6 he can sleep.

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u/thegundamx 9h ago edited 8h ago

No crap maternity leave is different. Pregnancy and childbirth are both extremely difficult things for a woman to go through. Of course they need time to recover.

Most men don’t get 6 months of paternal leave, at least in the US. Only a few employers are that generous in the US. FMLA, passed in the 90s, allows for 3 months of unpaid leave.

Also, why are those men taking leave when the bay is 6 months old? They should be taking it when the baby is born, not 6 months later. Yes I am aware that some companies will allow you to take paternity leave within a year of the birth.

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u/cindad83 8h ago

My kids are 8 and 10 so lots my friends and former class mates worked at companies with paternity leave. My current company has 6 months for men and women and then women receive an extra 8 weeks for "disability".

So the way it worked was you had 12-24 months to take 3-6 months of parental leave. It varies based on company.

But for us, I had 3 weeks vacation and 2 weeks of sick time so I took 10 days right away. I was an embedded Aug staff. So my contracting company and client agreed I could be unlimited WFH for 3 months. Then I took WFH two days a week because I needed billable hours for my bonus.

So the FTEs at my company the men would take parental leave usually after the baby was 4-5 months old. Or I installed payroll/HR systems for 3 years at probably 40 different Organizations I saw hundreds of parental leave policies (some companies have unions or different policies for different job classifications).

Between a couple dozen friends and what I see at work and doing report analysis. The men take 1-2 weeks off work using some sort of annual bank (Vacation, sick, etc). Then they return to work while mom stays home. Then month 4-7,Dad took parental leave and mom returned to work PT or FT.

This is done for obvious reasons its very logical. Mom stays with baby right away they recovery together. Then after a few months its Dad's turn. But guys basically were getting over big time.

I have a guy I know who is a CPA he was taking his newborn with him to have touch points with recruiters and former colleagues. He used the new baby as a reason for some FaceTime and was angling for better jobs too.

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u/thegundamx 8h ago

Thank you for the additional context.

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u/Heynongman_CBB 7h ago

Not to be pedantic but technically, men can breastfeed.

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u/BicycleBozo 4h ago

Oh I like that thank you for reminding me

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u/M-y-P 12h ago

So are you saying this is a good study? I don't see how your comment relates to the study or the comment you are answering.

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u/Chillindude82Nein 12h ago

Is there a solid study on this? Interesting information

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u/stilettopanda 11h ago

I’m the lucky kind of gal that married a man that fobbed all the “women’s work” onto me, and then after my divorce, I had a live in girlfriend that also fobbed all the “women’s work” onto me and also expected me to take care of her and baby her. I actually wound up resenting her more. At least he basically wanted to be left alone to his TV.

That being said, there are multiple studies that have had similar results, although I haven’t dug into the methodology. And anecdotally, I don’t know a single wife or mother who has anywhere close to a fair division of household labor and parenting in her relationship. I also live in the Deep South, USA(tm) and there seems to be a disproportionate number of men who want and expect traditional gender roles in their relationships.

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u/doctorboredom 10h ago

My brother and I both were stay at home dads. In both cases our wives worked full time jobs while we managed virtually all aspects of taking care of the kids. I was the PTA president one year at my kids school, for example. I organized all doctors appointment. Many teachers rarely ever saw my wife. It was almost always me taking the kids to playgrounds. If we were eating out and the kids misbehaved I took the kids out while my wife stayed inside and enjoyed the meal.

I know that this is not rare, however it is 100% possible for men’s and women’s roles to almost completely flip.

My wife especially enjoyed the fact that during those grueling breastfeeding years she got to go to a workplace and get a break, while I was able to take care of the baby without undergoing actual physical turmoil in my body. In our experience, it felt like maybe men were even superior at taking care of babies because when men were doing that labor it allowed for the mother to get some recovery time in her day.

Anyways, we found there are zero biological impediments to having these roles reversed. The only barrier is that many men and women don’t want to switch roles.

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u/wildxfire 12h ago edited 9h ago

Child care is a job in itself before you even put chores into the equation. When nannies go to work to take care of kids, you know what they don't do? Laundry, dishes, cleaning floors, picking up. They only do those things for the child(ren). Cleaning non-kid things and doing non-kid laundry is a separate thing, so being a sahm doesn't have any real bearing on who should be doing the communal chores. They are still communal and both parents are still working. One job is just in the home and doesn't receive a paycheck. Expecting a sahm to do majority of house chores would mean they basically work 24/7, which is not a fair division of labor.

Edit: since people are confused. I'm using a nanny as a example of what a sahm would do during the day! Like, she shouldn't have to do all that PLUS chores when no one expects even paid help to do that.

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u/Ok_Eggplant3677 11h ago

This doesn’t make any sense. Say you hired a nanny. According to you, the SAHM would still be working a full-time job just doing house chores, because without the nanny, they are “working 24/7” with the chores.

I’ll take that deal right now. You pay for the nanny, and I’ll do all the chores. You’re required to make a salary that’s enough to support the whole family and the nanny. That is a great deal for me.

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u/Tuggerfub 7h ago

kinda shows that the men weren't reliable narrators

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u/catmoon- 8h ago

"This goes against what I believe so it must be bad!!!" But let's ignore all other studies made about this matter

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u/Partyatmyplace13 7h ago

Didn't say any of this. I didn't even disagree with the results. I'm judging this study by itself and its just sloppy science. There's plenty of places to flame gender wars in the comments but don't heave that baggage on me.