New statistics prove men and women do nearly the same amount of work.
Moms do so much. Moms are put-upon and overworked. Moms—both the stay-at-home and working variety—get no help from their slovenly, inept husbands.
I’ve heard that refrain many, many times from a whole bunch of women. Hell, I’ve heard it often enough right here on this very website. And while I know full well there are many mothers doing extraordinary work both at home and in the workplace, all these claims of martyrdom just didn’t seem to add up or pass the “sniff test.” Something just always seemed…off.
Now, thanks to Ruth Davis Konigsberg’s article “Chore Wars” in Time this week, I know why.
Citing U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics, Konigsberg said married men and women with children who work full time spent virtually the same amount of time on paid and unpaid work in 2010. So, in a nutshell, when you combine time spent at the office and time spent on household chores, men and women are nearly equal. Women still did more work overall, but only by 20 minutes a day. That is the smallest difference ever reported, according to Konigsberg.
So what does that mean?
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First of all, men are still spending more time at the office doing paid work. And women do more of the unpaid work, including childcare duties. So just to be clear, no one is pretending men are doing the lion’s share of housework.
But let’s be just as clear about something else—it’s time women stop the “woe is me” routine.
Men are pulling their weight and logging the hours, but many women simply aren’t recognizing their contributions. As Konigsberg writes using her own personal experience, if men are forced to put in longer hours at home then women often feel like the weight of the world is on them. Men come home and pitch in however they can, but much of the day’s work is already done. But despite women feeling like they do it all, the math just doesn’t add up because time spent contributing
Some people say men should take more time off work to be with family. In a perfect world I agree. But the fact remains while employers often compromise with working mothers after a baby, dads are not cut the same slack. Good jobs are hard to come by and we need to keep them, especially if women choose to stay at home. Raising a child is hard work and of the utmost importance, but let’s not diminish the hours dad is putting in so mom can stay home.
But although some women scream for equality, there is some evidence they say one thing and mean another.
A recent Salary.com survey polled nearly 2,000 people regarding relationships and money. One of the questions they asked was “Would You Support a Partner Who Wanted to Be a Full-Time Parent?” Sixty-four percent of men said they would support someone who desired to be a full-time parent. But when women were asked the same thing, the number dropped to 35 percent.
Even more telling, however, is that 34 percent of women flat-out refused to be with a man who wanted to stay at home full-time to parent. So it appears some of the women calling for men to pitch in more at home are the same ones who wouldn’t even consider being with a man who wanted to run the household on a full time basis.
But lastly, I think mothers simply have a tendency to overvalue themselves and exaggerate the amount of work they do. And that’s not just me spouting my opinion.
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Again, going back to two recent Salary.com polls that surveyed mothers and fathers separately to determine how much time each group spends parenting, some very interesting disparities were readily apparent.
Stay-at-home fathers reported spending an average of 52.9 hours a week on childcare related duties, while working dads logged an average of 30.6 hours a week. But when moms took the same poll, stay-at-home mothers said they spend an average of 96.6 hours a week taking care of the kids and the home. Hell, working moms said they spend 55.9 hours a week on household and kid duties, in addition to working full time (defined as 35 hours or more a week).
Moms, we know you work hard but c’mon. You’re really trying to tell me working moms spend three hours more per week taking care of the house and kids than fathers who care for their children on a full-time basis?? It just doesn’t add up. Probably because moms overvalue themselves due to societal pressure to be “Super Mom” at all times. Dads, on the other hand, are likely much more realistic about the time and effort they put in on a daily basis.
I don’t think any of this is intentional and my point is not to call moms out. Instead, it’s to make people see there is evidence that men are not as lazy as everyone thinks they are, and women are not as overworked as they claim to be. Both genders do different things and perform various duties. All of them are important and none of them should be overlooked.
But if we want to make real progress, we’ll all stop keeping score.
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Photo credit: Shutterstock
The article suggests that women (mothers in particular) may be “overvaluing” their contribution to the household. “Stay-at-home dads reported spending an average of 52.9 hours a week on childcare related duties…while stay-at-home mothers said they spend an average of 96.6 hours a week taking care of the kids and the home.” …. This may very well be the truth if you take certain considerations into mind. For instance, both my husband and I run a business, and we take turns taking care of the house and kids. When he’s on house duty, he sets up the kids on the family… Read more »
The issue is that SAHMs are lauded almost universally. Stay at home dads AND working dads get verbally shafted. No doubt undesirable things are going on. I hope you are able to work that out. However, the fact remains that working dads get little appreciation. I haven’t heard that many women after being married a few years still express appreciation for their husbands’ work.
So then what’s up with being too busy after spending all day at home with our daughter (her choice as I am now working to pay off her $50000 Master’s degree) and the dishes, laundry, and no meals have been done. I’d rather stay at home and I guarantee that everything would be in order and meals ready to eat before she got home. That’s basically what I do on the weekends and then all the “man” stuff e.g. fixing the sink, mowing, raking, etc. and taking care of our duaghter (minus feeding since she is breast feeding). She’d deinately… Read more »
The funniest thing about this is that the surveys were done through self-reporting of men and women, and people who take this shit at face value are apparently unaware of the fact that many of them lie.
Who is lying more, men or women?
The American and European time use surveys and a large economic study that looked a 33 different countries debunked the myth that women spend more time working a few years ago, There is no such thing as the second shift.
Aaron, please stop using the phrase, pitching in, when talking about men’s contributions to housework. If a man just pitches in, he’s just helping, he is not taking responsibility. And he is being a burden to his spouse. And she is rightly resenting him. Women do not want to remind men to do the dishes, change the diapers and so on. They want men to do it WITHOUT being reminded. Women also do not want to do the tasks over again because the man was incompetent. When men first take on a household task, they need to ask women how… Read more »
MAB, you say, “Women do not want to remind men to do the dishes, change the diapers and so on. They want men to do it WITHOUT being reminded. Women also do not want to do the tasks over again because the man was incompetent. When men first take on a household task, they need to ask women how to do it and respect their expertise. They need to do it conscientiously and competently. They need to take responsiblity for the task.” And the rest gets worse. Are you trolling? It’s not enough for a husband to help willingly; he… Read more »
Hah, this is funny. Women are very bad at communicating what they want and even now they rather die than telling their husband what chores to do. Good luck with that ladies. Maybe start acting like an adult for once.
Men and women aren’t robots. You can’t weigh the “chores” in hours and get a clear answer of who did more. This article completely overlooks the emotional and psychological aspects of the “work” done. For instance, eight hours in an office is very different from eight hours spent, not only caring for small irrational people with constant needs, but also trying to complete your “chores” such as cooking, cleaning, and shopping. And let’s not forget the impact feelings of isolation can have on someone. At least when you go to work you are a part of something, at home you… Read more »
But it’s assumed that there was some agreement that the wife would be a SAHM. If she wants to go to work, she needs to work that out with her husband. But just passive aggressively remaining at home and complaining? In my experience, those out of the workforce have extremely idealized pictures of what it really is. I worked in a call center where for the last 2 years, I was often taking nonstop calls using a script. I was tethered to my desk. Most of that time, I had to ask to use the restroom. If I was more… Read more »
My household has no women, just two white men about the same age and size, who make about the same amount of money. Thus there’s no race/gender/class explanation for the differences in how we do chores. I cook and clean the kitchen more. He does everything in the yard, and more of the laundry. I suspect we both think we do more than the other.
Thanks for writing this article. I still subscribe to TIME and this latest reseach just confirms what,I think, most reasoning people realize: both moms and dads work long and hard to care for the family overall.
Time magazine lost most of its credibility with me when it published that article.
I have been a stay-at-home dad from the time my twins came home from the hospital until they started school (and I am again SAHD during the summer). I did the three-hour feeding schedule, the four-hour feeding schedule, the diapers, the formula, and quite often the shopping. I took them to doctor’s visits and to speech and physical therapy sessions. I got them up, fed them three meals a day, bathed them, and put them to bed. Now I am in the process of securing a divorce and my wife’s chief complaint is that I was not available to her… Read more »
Now I am in the process of securing a divorce and my wife’s chief complaint is that I was not available to her when she came home from work. That is followed closely by the complaint that she has been solely responsible for our bills for the past five years.
Funny. If the genders were reversed people would be tripping over themselves to tell the dad that she should made the marriage more equal by spending more time with the wife and kids and if custody doesn’t go as he wants its his fault and his fault alone…
Good comment. Actually, I don’t think most people in general would react that way but many, if not most, feminists certainly would.
Ugh. I disagree that many/most feminists would blame the hypothetical husband. Without knowing that specifics of a situation, I have no idea who is right and who is wrong, and generally if a relationship fails it is due to errors made by both parties. From Tomio’s perspective, it sounds like he went above and beyond and she failed to appreciate it and perhaps failed at communicating (I’m in no position to evaluate the situation). I wish you would stop lumping all feminists together. The basic definition of feminism is that men and women should have equal rights, although the specifics… Read more »
Feminst groups are simply hate groups. People know this today, and, while it is unfortunate that our generation has to endure the evils of Feminism, I am confident that future generations will recognize Feminism for what it is………… blatant sexist trash.
Then America can regain its mojo, relationships can once more have meaning and kids can have parents again……..
A divorce, ouch. Hope if it goes through, it is relatively painless for you
Would be interesting to see and compare the percentages, of the sahd and sahm relationships that end after 5 or 10yrs
Very interesting! In my own family experience, my mom actually was the opposite of what is described – she worked full-time and owned her own house before she married my dad at 29. Transitioning to being a stay-at-home mom dependent on her husband’s income was really tough for her, because she felt like she wasn’t contributing anything anymore. My dad actually had to cut out articles from newspapers that showed the “invisible salaries” of all of the work that wives do, so that she felt that her work was valuable. I wonder if these women over-value their work because they… Read more »
As long as our culture thinks it’s OK for mothers to be economically dependent on fathers, we’re going to have these types of conflicts. If the mother is making no money and the father is making all the money, that is a patriarcnal arrangement.