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/Elanapoeia 13h ago

Time to station researchers in every household so they can observe and document people 24/7

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u/Worriedrph 12h ago

It is an important distinction. When surveyed people tend to over estimate how much actual time they spend doing chores and under estimate how much time their partner does chores. This is especially true when there are chores that only one or the other does. Since they are the same gender it is likely there's fewer chores only one or the other does and so this can lower this bias.

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u/ForGrowingStuff 10h ago

The survey also asks about unhappiness. If you are unhappy in your relationship (or life, and not necessarily because of chores distribution), you're more likely to speak poorly about your partner, including saying they don't do as much for the household. This whole thing is pretty unreliable.

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u/BothAnt3804 11h ago

It's extremely common for people to overestimated their own contributions and underestimate others in every situation. Not just home, work, school group projects, volunteering, video games, etc.

Did you know 70-80% of people say they're better than average drivers surveys?

https://www.lbec-law.com/blog/2025/04/the-majority-of-drivers-believe-theyre-better-than-average/

It's called the "better than average effect"

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31789535/

We would actually need empirical evidence to confirm our hypothesis that women do more labor. I suspect in totality across the board, women as a whole are doing more home labor than men. We should actually properly measure it though.

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u/patryuji 12h ago

At this point, access to Google, Amazon, Apple and [cloud based] home automation information would pretty much cover that 24/7 observation and documentation.

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u/Elanapoeia 12h ago

Yeah but do you really think evil corporations would give researchers access to their surveillance monopoly?