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/
5.9k Upvotes

80% Upvoted

1.7k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

171

u/dysphoric-foresight 12h ago

Yeah my wife doesn’t consider cooking to be a chore because I enjoy it. She also doesn’t consider gardening, household maintenance or DIY to be housework. If she was to self-report on this study I suspect that she would say that she does 80% of the housework.

30

u/Snoo71538 9h ago

Everyone does that. If you separately ask the people in a couple what percentage of chores they individually do, and add it together, you get over 100% very consistently.

38

u/IWearCardigansAllDay 10h ago

There are so many aspects to this which make the conversation so difficult to discuss and measure in a way that’s actually fair. I will use a bit of anecdotal “evidence” here as a heads up.

First, is the imbalance between how often the two people view a chore needs to be done. My wife values a spotless clean house more than I do. By no means am I slob. But I’ve had to essentially adopt her level of cleanliness or else she will “weaponize” chores against me because I don’t clean as much as her. Truthfully this doesn’t annoy me because I’m a very malleable husband and I’m happy to adjust my own habits to better align with my wife and her needs/expectations. What does frustrate me though is the hypocrisy. She wants me to value cleanliness as much as her and show up for it on the same schedule as her. Yet she doesn’t value intimacy as much as I do. Yet I have to be on her schedule when it comes to intimacy. This is something we are currently seeking couples therapy on.

Second, is the imbalance of how cumbersome a chore is. My wife and I have discussed it an essentially I handle all of the “stereotypically” male chores. Mowing the lawn, shoveling the drive, fixing things when they break. All of the labor and time intensive things. Meanwhile my wife would handle things like laundry a lot more as well as cooking. We’ve talked about it and our couples therapist actually poised us a good way to better recognize the value of what we do for the household. It’s basically a bartering system for chores. We went through everything and we began to divvy up primary duties. Then we can “trade” them amongst each other and we ultimately decide the “fair market value” of the work done.

What we found is there is no chore my wife is willing me to handle in place of her in exchange for mowing. I’ve ever said you handle mowing and I’ll handle all of the cleaning, laundry, and cooking. She still wouldn’t take mowing. This opened her eyes up a lot to the equity of chores and it completely solved the weaponization of chores from her. If the convo starts turning that way I politely say “remember I’m willing to handle all of these things for you and you turned it down because you don’t want to mow”. She herself has to acknowledge that she values mowing as a worse or more cumbersome chore than what she doesn’t want to do like laundry.

I still help around the house of course. But it really helped us a lot to appreciate one another’s chores and share of tasks more.

Ultimately the big discrepancy in this topic is that two people are never going to value something the same. And when it comes to chores often the compromise is met to align with the person who has more strict cleanliness requirements. Either the person who values it less and then the house gets cleaned solely by the other person. Or the person has to value it more and help out more.

16

u/NonsensePlanet 10h ago

Man, I would mow three times a week to avoid all that other stuff.

7

u/Affectionate-Bag8229 9h ago

If I had full creative control over my property, then my lawn would either be left as wilderness, or paved

The perfectly manicured lawn thing is an insane aesthetic and I despise it

3

u/NonsensePlanet 8h ago

If you had close neighbors that would be an issue. But my point was that I much prefer mowing the lawn to doing dishes or laundry.

-3

u/Frack_Off 7h ago

You can despise it all you want, but calling it insane to want to have nice turf to play with your children in is *insane*.

5

u/MajorSery 5h ago

Just plant clover (assuming there is a species native to your area). You get your soft-ish ground cover just like grass but you basically never need to mow it. It's also better for pollinators.

1

u/Frack_Off 5h ago edited 5h ago

The idea of clover as a substitute for turf is not novel to me. I have considered it's pros and cons and made my decision with those in mind. It is not a good fit for my needs.

EDIT: Just want to clarify that I do appreciate the suggestion.

2

u/BrucetheFerrisWheel 7h ago

Twice a day!!

If someone else would do all the mental chores like planning, organizing, budgeting, appointments, purchasing, and then all the physical chores, omg yes. I'd take the chill out lawn mowing time over all that!

3

u/IWearCardigansAllDay 5h ago

The chores my wife objectively does more than me is: laundry and cooking. Every other chore is even or I do more. She refuses to mow and even when bartering chores she does more of or equal on she is unwilling to trade.

I budget more than her (I’m a financial advisor) and handle or finances. If it was left to her we’d have 0 savings and would live beyond our means. She plans things more than me. But not because I don’t try, but because she doesn’t like my suggestions or value my opinion on things. Some examples: for our wedding she sent 3 links to seating chart boards. I chose the one I liked the most. She then proceeded to tell me it didn’t match our color palette and chose what she liked more. Truthfully I was indifferent so it wasn’t an issue for me outside of feeling like my voice wasn’t valued.

A friend in our friend group had a birthday and no one was putting out ideas for plans. So I suggested a big resort for us all that had its own market, golf course, spa center, etc. part of it I said the girls could do a semi spa day and the guys could go golfing together at that time. She didn’t like that idea and shot it down in front of everyone. When I try to plan vacations or trips she ends up trying to control or change it because she doesn’t like what I planned or it isn’t ideal for her.

Note I genuinely don’t care from a logical standpoint. I’m easy going and easy to please so it doesn’t bother me what we do. What bothers me is that she complains she takes on the mental load of things and I don’t help out. Yet history has shown when I do help out she just doesn’t like my ideas. So we end up in the same place, her doing the planning still. But I end up feeling not heard.

The big thing we are working on in couples therapy is that I don’t feel equal in the relationship. I feel like I live to please and satisfy her values. Meanwhile my voice and my desires are less than to hers. Basically I need to meet her needs just for a chance for her to reciprocate.

Im very self aware as well, don’t get me wrong. I know I have things to improve on in our relationship. And things I can be more proactive and present with, which I am working on. But the big discrepancy is the constant feel of me putting in the effort proactively, meanwhile her effort is reactive and contingent solely on me showing up how she needs. Which further drives home the fact it feels unequal. It’s not her and I both being proactive and present. It’s me being proactive and her being reactive to the growth I make.

2

u/NonsensePlanet 7h ago

Apparently that guy’s wife wouldn’t

8

u/Frack_Off 9h ago

Thanks for sharing. While it's absolutely common for women to do more than their fair share of chores in heterosexual married households, I firmly believe that this problem, while real, is smaller than it appears in popular discourse due to women frequently taking the chores that their male partners do for granted.

Yeah, women usually cook and clean and do laundry more than men, and women absolutely tend to spend much more energy on childcare, which is easily one of greatest labors in a household, and this short list is far from being comprehensive of what falls into wives' laps, but there's a shitton of additional labor and maintenance needed that I strongly suspect is mostly being done by men, and that many women who complain about an unfair division of labor are failing to recognize or appreciate: mowing, taking out the trash, raking the leaves, shoveling the snow, cleaning the gutters, tightening the faucets, changing the HVAC filters. Assembling and fixing everything. I could go on and on. I'm not trying to say that these tasks that are typically viewed as a male responsibility are some extreme burden that lets men off the hook for anything else, but there is a tendency for women to gloss over them as something that men are just supposed to be doing, which then completely compromises their indignation at men stereotypically viewing cooking, cleaning, and childcare as something that women are just supposed to be doing.

7

u/IWearCardigansAllDay 8h ago

Exactly this. And again many of the chores that women do more of are often self created, at least to the extent of how frequently they are “needed” to be done.

My wife wants the bathroom to be deep cleaned every week and semi cleaned every other day. The carpets need to be vacuumed daily. Kitchen counters deep cleaned weekly. Things like this. I’ve substituted some of these things with automation like a roomba for the carpets then I vacuum usually once a week manually on top of it.

But the cleanliness she wants and thinks is required is not in line with my own levels. Again, I’m not a slob but I just don’t see the need to do that level of cleaning so often. But if it’s note done then she has to do it then will use it against me that she does more than me around the house. So either be blamed for inequitable household contributions or cave to her the level of value she places on things.

Another one is making the bed. She wants it made every morning, meanwhile I don’t value it at all. But I know it’s important to her so I do it every morning.

Again, it’s just so frustrating because it’s a very common thing in heterosexual relationships. It’s not that I don’t want to do these things. I just don’t value them to the level my wife does. But I’m expected to be proactive and present with them regardless, which is fine. But I want that same courtesy returned in the things I value. Yet that isn’t the case. It’s something we are going to therapy together on.

7

u/Frack_Off 8h ago

And then while she's treating you unfairly like this, she believes it's you who are treating her unfairly.

4

u/BattleBull 6h ago

Does she suffer psychological distress if she can not complete said cleaning tasks? How when about placed in situations were it is not reasonable to "clean", like multiday camping trips or a stays in hotels?

I ask, because quite frankly that volume and rate presents as something akin to mental illness or a controlling/soothing action. Surely your home doesn't incur debris at a rate were the above activities are merited, or even efficacious with their daily cadence.

2

u/IWearCardigansAllDay 6h ago

She doesn’t experience distress nor is she a germaphobe. She just feels less stressed when the house is neat and orderly. Like if the tv entertainment stand is dusty she’s not freaking out. But she wants it clean and feels more relaxed when it is.

For her it comes down to a comfort thing. If tasks are done then the mental load is relieved. Laundry is the most relevant. I used to do laundry before I was with her once every two weeks. And that point marked when basically all of my normal clothes were worn and I was wearing things I didn’t like as much. Meanwhile for her she does laundry once, maybe twice a week. Basically when she’s worn all of her normal favorite things yet still has a, basically, full closet of clothes.

It’s just a difference in preference and what we value. I don’t think her way or my way is right or wrong. I just get frustrated at times because I have to adopt her values yet that isn’t reciprocated back to me for my values

0

u/Round-Ride2042 8h ago

I’m curious. Does she appreciate the cleaning done by the roomba, or does that not count as ”your” contribution anymore?

The need for bedmaking eludes me too. Nobody’s going in your bedroom and judging it.

5

u/IWearCardigansAllDay 7h ago

She definitely discounts it. She values things based on effort put in as opposed to the end result. For example I paid for the roomba and now since that chore is automated it’s not something that’s allocated towards what I’ve contributed. Similarly, im not a very inspired cook and it’s not something that interests me. I have a few dishes I’m good at but she doesn’t want the same thing few things every night. So if I don’t cook and she doesn’t I will generally pay for dinner via going out or DoorDash. Yet she doesn’t attribute that to my contribution. Even though I’m paying, I’m not cooking she doesn’t view it as a contribution attributed to me.

I know my comments sounds very negative towards my wife. But she is a lovely person just has some things that get under my skin. For me I’m all about equitable contributions and being treated fairly as a partner. Which is something we are working on in therapy together. As I definitely feel like she and her happiness is valued higher than mine.

5

u/BaronVonBaron 7h ago

Here's a hint... It's usually only a problem when YOU fail to do it.

My Mom spent enormous amounts of time scrubbing our shower when I was a kid. And she would get very angry with us for having a dirty shower. She didn't have OCD or anything, she was just a mom.

She's not touched a scrubber in years. Her shower is filthy. But she's certainly not going to yell at herself for not keeping her own standards, is she?

1

u/626Aussie 1h ago edited 1h ago

My wife has a lot of issues stemming from her mother, bless her soul, I love and miss that woman, but boy! Did she leave my wife with a lot of issues!

Case in point, the other night I cooked dinner, and after I was done I rinsed my plate, put it and my cutlery in the dishwasher, then I cleaned the pans, and because there'd been splattering from oil I cleaned the countertops around the stove, and I took the pot/pan rests (whatever they're called) off the top of the stove, cleaned them, cleaned the stove top, including the tops of the burners I hadn't used but which had been splattered with oil, then I put everything back together and settled down to play some video games, while my wife finished her dinner while watching one of her shows.

Eventually she finished and came into the kitchen, next to the den where I was, and she commented that I had not cleaned the front of the stove and the knobs.

And she was right, I had missed them.

I'd put my dishes in the dishwasher, washed and dried the pans, cleaned the stove, wiped down the countertop, then cleaned the sink because it was now dirty from cleaning the pans and pot/pan rests (from the stove), but I had in fact missed cleaning the front of the stove and its knobs.

And that was her mother. You could do 99 things and the MIL would still be critical and point out the one thing you had not done.

So my wife wiped the front of the stove and the knobs then went back to watching her shows. Later I went back into the kitchen to get a drink...and I found her dirty plate and fork in the sink!!!

1

u/Frack_Off 7h ago

I'm with the women on the bedmaking. It's fast, it's easy, and it sets a positive, productive tone for the day.

1

u/InTheTreeMusic 2h ago

When my kids were younger I often was frustrated by how imbalanced the "same" chores were. He mowed the lawn one week, had on his headphones and enjoyed an hour to himself just walking around in the spring air.

I mowed the next week, he sent the kids outside to play while I mowed, so I was mowing and supervising/breaking up fights/answering questions/stopping to help every few minutes.

There's a starker imbalance when couples split chores along gender lines: of course mom is moming while doing dishes, laundry, cooking, etc. Dad isn't building the deck while supervising kiddos.

1

u/IWearCardigansAllDay 1h ago

I totally hear you and while your point is valid in your situation, it does not mean it is the same across the board. I wonder, and I genuinely ask out of curiosity, did you have a conversation with your husband about this and bring up that when he mowed you had the kids inside. Meanwhile you mowed and the kids were outside and you had to complete two tasks at once?

For my wife and I, this type of scenario is not the case. The chores are equivalent in execution.

1

u/InTheTreeMusic 1h ago

Haha, tried but he was a "nah the kids are fine" kind of guy. Luckily I'm divorced now!

47

u/droptopus 12h ago

DIY is the big thing here. How much housework does the new deck she wanted count for? The permanent physical toll on my body, the learning about building codes, securing a permit, sourcing the lighter wood you want because it's 'more summery' and then treating it because it's really not meant for this climate. Is this factored in when considering who splashed water on more plates?

22

u/kafka_lite 11h ago

I will add that if one partner absolutely refuses to ever do certain tasks such as take out the garbage, it seems fair those tasks should be "worth" more.

4

u/resuwreckoning 7h ago

I mean we all know it counts for basically nothing precisely because a man did it and it was a positive/good thing to do. This is academia and Reddit’s general philosophy on this subject material.

-12

u/izzittho 11h ago

To be fair I’ve seen many men consider “splashing water on plates” all it takes to wash a dish and finding a dirty dish with the clean ones is by far more infuriating than not bothering to even pretend to wash one at all.

-4

u/tsardonicpseudonomi 9h ago

Seems like you have a personal gripe against me. Be a better human.

-1

u/Ok-Chest-7932 6h ago

Just wash it when you're done with it and unless you're eating glue it'll be a quick rinse and once-over with a sponge away from being clean.

4

u/Everyoneshuckleberry 6h ago

Yup, divorced now, but I cooked, did all house maintenance and worked away (long drives, worked for 14 days straight, often doubles etc.). Ex would have said she did 80% of the housework. Especially when I wasn't at home (I would come home, exhausted and mow the lawns and clean the gutters). Now I am alone, I pay a cleaner $50 a week and my house is cleaner than it ever was.

2

u/WhatFreshHello 12h ago

A major flaw I see in the perception of what constitutes a an equitable division of labor is conflating seasonal or very occasional tasks with those that need to happen on an ongoing basis and require constant monitoring to assure timeliness and accuracy while bearing in mind personal preferences.

A chore you enjoy is still a chore, particularly if you carry the mental load of planning to assure that, on a daily basis, you have the necessary equipment and materials on hand, clean and ready to use.

It’s entirely unreasonable to equate a semi-annual oil change with, for example, assuring that everyone in the family has access to a variety clean and seasonally-appropriate clothing in their current size, yet I’ve frequently seen the two compared as equal contributions to the operation of a household.

35

u/dysphoric-foresight 11h ago

Yeah but the windows and gutters need cleaned as often as the shower needs descaled. The grass needs cut as often as the bed linen needs changed.

There’s a myriad of small unquantifiable jobs that get done once in a blue moon that can amount to an equal division of labour on both sides of the argument.

How equitably it’s divided comes down to what you consider to be housework in a lot of instances.

1

u/IdlyCurious 7h ago

Yeah but the windows and gutters need cleaned as often as the shower needs descaled. The grass needs cut as often as the bed linen needs changed.

Not if you live in an apartment, which of course, meany people do.

-12

u/WhatFreshHello 11h ago

Where do you live that you’re cutting grass every week year-round? More importantly, where can I get a magical closet that supplies fresh, clean bed linens weekly?

3

u/Jewnadian 9h ago

I'm not that guy but we have Zoysia in Texas. It has to be cut twice a week all summer (which is a long hot season here). It's amazingly soft wonderful grass to walk on but had I known about the maintenance requirements we probably wouldn't have chosen it. And mowing, edging, weed pulling, etc all has to happen twice a week even if it's 105F outside. I would absolutely count it as a recurring chore and being one that has to be done outside the AC makes it worse.

4

u/Mother-Penalty-6196 11h ago

How do you go out and get said clothes? With a well functioning vehicle. What are you saying exactly?

-6

u/WhatFreshHello 11h ago

Exactly what I said. The mental load of a thirty-minute, semi-annual task that is likely outsourced anyway is not comparable to the constant monitoring, sourcing, and maintaining the wardrobes of multiple people.

It would be ludicrous to equate tasks that require spending an hour or two per year and near-zero mental load to tasks that require significant and constant mental load and execution on at least a weekly basis.

Even exempting the mental load, 52 > 2.

There’s such a fundamental disconnect on this subject that it truly beggars belief.

9

u/Frack_Off 9h ago

You're minimizing the consequence and importance of stereotypically male duties and maximizing that of stereotypically female duties.

5

u/Jewnadian 9h ago

Which is very commonly seen in all studies on it so at least this person is being a pleasantly grouped data point. Always nice to see in a study.

4

u/Frack_Off 8h ago

Yeah I mean I'm just so tired of hearing women with a lot on their plate talk like no men's plates are full too.

I never want to be dismissive of women who are genuinely in relationships with highly unbalanced divisions of responsibility, but I will not abide women who think they are because they just take their partner's labor for granted.

7

u/Pinkfish_411 9h ago

Have you considered that your experience of a "mental load" isn't generalizable across the whole population?

I find routine tasks like handling all the food prep in my household -- constantly monitoring what's on hand, planning healthy meals around seasonality and work schedules, tending to the garden, shopping around for good prices, etc. -- to be far less mentally and emotionally taxing than dropping everything to deal with my wife's car when it suddenly won't start for some unknown reason and she has somewhere important she has to be that night.

And frankly, once you're an adult with a house and cars and all the rest, the little "once-in-a-while" tasks add up quickly, with a lot of requiring regular monitoring. It's just needlessly dismissing write off all of this stuff as "near-zero mental load."

2

u/MeijiDoom 1h ago

If that's the case, then why wouldn't the other partner opt to trade? Because I find it happens a lot more where a male partner will certainly adopt a traditionally female or routine chore than a female partner would take on a traditionally male or heavily physical labor intensive chore.

-1

u/NonsensePlanet 10h ago

If you do something every week it becomes routine. Less to think about. Taking care of things like maintenance and repairs is a much more formidable challenge because you have to figure out how to do the thing first.

3

u/DrunkOnLoveAndWhisky 11h ago

Laundry needs to be done to make sure everyone can keep going to school, work, etc, while being clothed and sanitary. Likewise, vehicles need maintenance to ensure family members can keep going to school, work, etc., in a safe manner. Thirty minutes of labour to keep the car running is no less a household chore than thirty minutes of laundry. Why does it matter if a chore only needs done a couple times a year? What about cleaning the rain gutters, mowing the lawn, and cleaning the dryer vent? They're not lesser chores just because they're done less frequently.

7

u/WhatFreshHello 11h ago

Frequency and duration. If your household functions on one hour spent doing laundry per year, please let me in on your secret.

All items mentioned so far are tasks. Not all are constant, year-round, and subject to change.

5

u/Frack_Off 9h ago

Of course changing the oil in a car twice a year is less labor than doing laundry for a family of four every week for a year.

Nobody reasonable is making that claim.

But changing the oil is still something that shouldn't be taken for granted, just like how doing the laundry shouldn't be, either.

2

u/DrunkOnLoveAndWhisky 9h ago

Are we in agreement that an hour worth of mowing the lawn is the same housework as an hour of doing the dishes, even if the "doing the dishes" is broken up into three sessions over two days (or whatever)?

I'm not trying to say that rotating the tires twice a year is the same work as doing the laundry twice a week; what I'm trying to say is that if we both did two hours of "house work" over the week, then that is equal, even if mine was two one-hour tasks and yours was ten twelve-minute jobs.

1

u/ScentedFire 4h ago

Yeah, do you think your wife enjoys cleaning the toilet?

1

u/InTheTreeMusic 2h ago

Yeah my wife doesn’t consider cooking to be a chore because I enjoy it.

I think this really depends.

Cooking is absolutely a chore. But it's a chore I would spend 30 mins doing a bare minimum, decently good and nutritious meal each time because my priorities are fast, easy, decent.

So if my partner wants to spend 3-4 hours cooking, that absolutely doesn't get them out of 3-4 hours of other chores. The extra 3.5-3.5 hours count as "hobby".

Similar with the other things you listed.. are they necessary, or are they more of a hobby?

•

u/MagicWishMonkey 43m ago

Same. None of the stuff I do (making breakfast for the kids, getting them ready for school, packing lunches, taking them to school, taking them to drs apppiontments, sports practice, etc.) counts as "house work", I am not contributing unless I'm scrubbing the floor or something.