Husbands Who Share Housework Have Less Sex

Medical News Today ^ | 2-1-13 | Joseph Nordqvist

[Brookhaven]

Husbands who help out with household chores have less sex than men in so-called "traditional" marriages where housework is done exclusively by the wife, researchers from the USA and Spain reported in the journal American Sociological Review.

In faithful relationships, the wife whose husband is involved in housework obviously has less sex too, the authors added.

This latest study contradicts most previous ones, which tended to imply that married men generally have more sex in exchange for doing housework. However, those studies did not take into account which chores the husbands did.

The researchers, all sociologists, said that their study demonstrated that sex is not a bargaining chip in marriage. Rather, it is associated with the kinds of chores each partner completes.

Married couples reported greater sexual frequency if the women did the cooking, cleaning and shopping and the men did the gardening, electrics and plumbing, car maintenance and paid the bills.

Co-author Julie Brines, professor of sociology at the University of Washington, said:

"The results show that gender still organizes quite a bit of everyday life in marriage. In particular, it seems that the gender identities husbands and wives express through the chores they do also help structure sexual behavior."

Lead author, Sabino Kornrich, warned that men should not assume from these findings that they should not become involved in traditionally female household tasks, such as shopping, cleaning or cooking. "Men who refuse to help around the house could increase conflict in their marriage and lower their wives' marital satisfaction."

The researchers gathered and examined data from a national survey of approximately 4,500 heterosexual married couples in the USA who took part in the National Survey of Families and Households. The survey, the largest to measure sexual frequency among married couples, included data from 1992 to 1994.

Brines does not believe that the division of household chores - which in this study did not include child care - and sex have changed much since 1994.

"Traditional female tasks" include shopping, cleaning, looking after the kids, and cooking According to the study, husbands and wives spent an average of 34 hours each week on traditionally female chores. The men's average age was 46, and the women's 44. The couples spent an extra 17 hours each week on "men's work".

On average, the males were involved in about one-fifth of traditionally female chores, and slightly more than half of male-type work. The researchers found that women tend to be more involved with helping out in traditionally male chores, than men do with female tasks.

The couples reported having sex approximately five times, on average, during the four weeks before the survey. In marriages where the woman carried out all the traditionally female tasks, the couples had sex 1.6 times as often, compared to couples where the man was involved in all the female chores.

Brines says she is not surprised that there was more sex among the traditional couples. "If anything surprised us, it was how robust the connection was between a traditional division of housework and sexual frequency." Brines is an expert in family and household dynamics.

The following possible explanations for their findings were ruled out by the researchers: Male coercive behavior played no role, because women reported similar satisfaction levels in their sex lives in both types of households (traditional or "modern")

In two-income households, the difference in sexual frequency was still driven by male behavior regarding traditional female chores. Also, the wife's income had no impact on sexual frequency.

The following had no impact on sexual frequency - gender ideology, religion, and happiness in marriage. Brines said:

"Marriage today isn't what it was 30 or 40 years ago, but there are some things that remain important. Sex and housework are still key aspects of sharing a life, and both are related to marital satisfaction and how spouses express their gender identity."

Recovery from Workload Influenced by Housework and Leisure Activity Balance

How rapidly and effectively male and female spouses recover from the burdens of work is probably influenced by a balance of housework time and leisure time, a study by experts from the University of Southern California reported in the Journal of Family Psychology.

Over half of all married couples in the USA are two-income households. The authors wondered whether the winner was the one who had the most help with the housework.

They found that what seems to be good for the male partner was bad for the female, but what is good for the female does not have enough of an impact on the male.

In another study involving 17,000 people in 28 countries, researchers from George Mason University found that married men did less housework than live-in boyfriends. The study was published in the Journal of Family Issues.

[Texan5]

Neither my first husband nor MrT5 could vacuum a floor while running the washer, never mind “real” cooking, even in the microwave, so of course they can’t think about sex at the same time-guys can’t multi-task like women-they need to stick to guy chores.

[ctdonath2]

Non-sequitur. The man who does/gives more, gets less. Don’t see how that reaches your conclusion.

[eyedigress]

A man doing housework isn’t paid.

Do the math and figure it out on your own kids.

[Vermont Lt]

Thank God. I was afraid I would have to change teams. I really like being with my wife.

[RegulatorCountry]

Having dodged soccer moms careening down the road while blabbing on the cell and yelling at kids in theback for years, I can say with some authority that women aren’t quite as good at “multitasking” as they imagine themselves to be.

Or, perhaps entering visuospatial skills or the lack of them into the mix is the problem?

[Sacajaweau]

We had three kids....One to vacumn, one to do the dishes and one to fold clothes. Life was good!!

[eyedigress]

LOL! Nut

[dfwgator]

[Sacajaweau]

Don’t tell me I had to put /s after that.

[eyedigress]

Gator took care of that.

If I have time to clean the home, I am home way to much.

Travel time last week was 15hrs just for 3 days!!

[RetSignman]

[Husbands who help out with household chores have less sex...]

They are just giving their wives more time with their battery operated devises ergo: “Not tonight I’ve got a headache”

[exit82]

My wife and I have been married almost 37 years.

I do a lot of housework. We always shared the workload, having raised three kids to adulthood, who were born within five years of each other.

We both worked at times in those years, both changed the diapers, did the wash, the food shopping. My wife was a stay at home mom when the kids were young by our choice. When I was between jobs, and my wife was working full time, I was a stay at home dad to three teens, which turned out to be a very good thing.

Actually whoever had the most energy did the work at hand, as the three little urchins really wore us out in those days when they were small.

I can honestly say it was a team effort.

And, by the way, it disproved the title of this article by a long shot. ;)

[Dawggie]

Perhaps men that share housework have more kid?

[Brookhaven]

And, by the way, it disproved the title of this article by a long shot. ;)

Or, you are the exception to the rule.

[exit82]

Perhaps men that share housework have more kid?

More kids would be the result of more tries.

I think you may have broke the code.

[Texan5]

Allowing children to misbehave in vehicles-a warning before leaving the house, and following up on it worked for me- and talking on phone/putting on makeup/eating from a bowl/reading while operating a vehicle is not multitasking-it is willfully stupid, and we all know stupid can’t be fixed.

I worked for years where vocational evaluation was done, and women are indeed better at multitasking work. They also have better intuitive and verbal skills Men are better at determining/understanding spatial relationships, and have better higher math skills-hence, they make better engineers and do better in physics, etc. Men have superior size and strength, women have better fine motor dexterity.

The two genders are made to complement each other, physically and mentally-we ought to be capitalizing on that, not blurring the lines...

[hecticskeptic]

Check post 30… I think that RegulatorCountry said it well but let me elaborate on one point. The article doesn’t make a statement on why the men who are supposedly doing more housework are doing it and this is critical for understanding anything to do with this issue. Let me list a few options… 1. They have made a deal with their wife. I’ll do this if you do that ((in the broad scope of marriages, the deal making could theoretically include anything but no doubt for some people, sex could be part of it). 2. Some of the men may be doing the housework with the idea that they ‘are earning browny points that can be turned into sexual favours’. Thus even if there was no deal (implied or otherwise), doing the housework becomes equated with sexual favours. 3. The men doing the housework see a need in the household to contribute in that area and are simply stepping up to the plate to fulfil it….. and are doing so without any preconditions or suppositions of any sort attached to it. Take your pick at the reason…they see that their wife is too tired to do it, they enjoy doing it (and perhaps know that is not something that the wife likes or perhaps he secretly is aware that she generally does a poor job at it), he is doing it simply because that is the way the couple has worked out the division of duties in their household, he is doing it because his wife is sick, she is too busy….endless reasons. It doesn’t really matter what the reason is or even if the reason is rooted in concepts of love and/or duty. If the man is doing the housework because of any reason in No 3, those are all good and honourable reasons for doing it. If it is for any reason that looks like it could fall under 1 or 2, then this means sex is being exchanged for goods, services or some other forms of tangible exchange… and I would put it to you that this always will lead to failure in marriage because it is not based on what it should be……and in fact, it is based on something more akin to prostitution. And failure in marriage certainly if nothing else leads to reduced sex. So…. no surprise. There is only one reason why a man should get sex in a marriage… because he is the husband. This is only one reason why a woman should get sex in a marriage… because she is the wife.

[right way right]

My wife is mowing the lawn right now.
I’m so turned on!