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Exactly how much housework does a husband create?

Posted April 03, 2008 5:00 PM

From PhysOrg.com - latest science and technology news:

Having a husband creates an extra seven hours a week of housework for women, according to a University of Michigan study of a nationally representative sample of U.S. families. For men, the picture is very different: A wife saves men from about an hour of housework a week. The findings are part of a detailed study of housework trends, based on 2005 time-diary data from the federally-funded Panel Study of Income Dynamics, conducted since 1968 at the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR). "It's a well-known pattern," said ISR economist Frank Stafford, who directs the study. "There's still a significant reallocation of labor that occurs at marriage—men tend to work more outside the home, while women take on more of the household labor. Certainly there are all kinds of individual differences here, but in general, this is what happens after marriage. And the situation gets worse for women when they have children." Overall, the amount of housework done by U.S. women has dropped considerably since 1976, while the amount of housework done by men has increased, according to Stafford. In 1976, women did an average of 26 hours of housework a week, compared with about 17 hours in 2005. Men did about six hours of housework a week in 1976, compared with about 13 hours in 2005. But when the researchers looked at just the last 10 years, comparing how much housework single men and women in their 20s did in 1996 with how much they did in 2005 if they stayed single versus if they got married, they found a slightly different pattern.

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#1

Re: Exactly how much housework does a husband create?

04/03/2008 6:43 PM

And how many of my tax-dollars went to fund this research? What is the point to this "research"?

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#2

Re: Exactly how much housework does a husband create?

04/04/2008 4:13 AM

Exactly how many DIY jobs does a Wife create ?

Del (don't let Mrs Cat see this )

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#3
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Re: Exactly how much housework does a husband create?

04/05/2008 8:37 AM

Answer: Too many...

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#4

Re: Exactly how much housework does a husband create?

04/05/2008 12:20 PM

Does this mean that a man does in one hour what a woman does in seven hours? I wouldn't want to be the one to publish such a report, and then have to admit that the tax payers paid for it.

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#5

Re: Exactly how much housework does a husband create?

04/07/2008 2:19 AM

'a husband creates an extra seven hours a week of housework'

This bloke lacks ambition!

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#6

Re: Exactly how much housework does a husband create?

04/07/2008 8:34 AM

According to my wife, all of it!

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#7

Re: Exactly how much housework does a husband create?

04/07/2008 10:46 AM

So having a husband creates more housework, so where does it come from? Another stupid study that serves no purpose and is conducted poorly, I wonder how many tax dollars this study cost us.

How about the fact that having a wife and being married simply increases the amount of work to be done? Who has "nice" kitchens, living room sets and new bedrooms because their wife "needed" it? Do you want all that crap or were you convinced that you are supposed to own those things. If I weren't married I would have almost nothing to clean in the first place. I also wouldn't have to do the maintenance to my wife's car and I wouldn't care about repainting the bathroom in the spare bedroom because it is "out-of-date". Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't trade my wife for anything in the world but shoddy useless science like this needs to end, bring real issues to light so that things that can have a positive effect on humanity can be found. What's next, a study showing that prisoners don't like being loked up in prisons???

Instead of ridiculous studies like this why don't they examine and study why the "house-wife"/homemaker of 30-50 years ago has disappeared and how families in general spend more time working and in their careers so they can buy that new SUV or a bigger house. A true unbiased study on this subject would show how we work harder for much of the same basic necessities, (food energy, house) excluding Ipods and all that other crap.

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