According to a study across seven countries, men who do more household chores are happier and report more well-being and a better work-life balance.
Of course, correlation is not causation. It’s probable that having a better work-life balance leads to doing more chores: after all, if you’re spending sixty hours a week working, you don’t have much time to sweep the floors. Even more likely, both the happiness and the chores may be caused by some other variable: for instance, not working an excessive amount, or a belief in gender equality. So it’s probably not that if you start doing half the cooking you’ll magically end up fulfilled in your life. (Unless you really like cooking, I guess.)
However, I think this is important for what it says about men.
It says that the Success Myth is wrong, that happiness is not a product of making more money and working longer hours than anyone else. Of course, for nearly everyone, enough money and a sense of purpose are an important component of being happy. But they aren’t the only thing that’s important: family, friends, hobbies, occasionally kicking back to watch some bad TV and eat an entire plate of cookies and, yes, washing the dishes… all of those are also important components to living a happy life for most people.
It’s almost as if dudes are people. Imagine that.
About ozyfrantz
My girlfriend and I cook together all the time. It’s really fun. I couldn’t get her to change my timing belt though…
Being connected to the processes that keep you alive, makes you feel more secure. I know I feel better about things when I have a general sense of what’s going on, worst case scenarios, and what normal looks like, vis a vis things like keeping a car on the road, utilities turned on, food in the fridge, etc.
I’d say happier people want to do more. Depression and burnout have made me far less likely to clean, I had to force myself to clean up but when I did I started to get happier. I now take pride in cleaning where I can as long as my health allows me to do so.
Of course both genders should share out the load according to time spent, energy spent (you can do far more exertion in a smaller time period in some jobs vs others), stress, and health of each for their work and housework balance. A roofer for instance working very hot days will use up a lot of his/her energy n drain themselves quicker than an office worker I’d say, should they be expected to do the same amount at home as their partner who uses far less energy and has more available? Of course it’s complex but life itself is very complex, our energy levels only go so far. I did 2 hours of garden work yesterday with sweat pouring off me, I used far more energy and felt more drained than when I do 2 hours of cleaning inside for instance. If my partner had a job that exhausted them much more than me than I’d expect to do more housework to a certain degree.
I always wonder how many people really are lazy vs how many are just stressed n depressed and have given up.
I know that when I’m in a depressive state, one thing that helps is cleaning up my place. Feels better to look around and see a nice space that feels civilized and decent. Of course, as everyone knows, the first symptom of depression is that you don’t want to clean, or exercise, or get fresh air, or see friends, or anything else that helps with depression. So that’s tricky.
It says that the Success Myth is wrong, that happiness is not a product of making more money and working longer hours than anyone else. Of course, for nearly everyone, enough money and a sense of purpose are an important component of being happy. But they aren’t the only thing that’s important: family, friends, hobbies, occasionally kicking back to watch some bad TV and eat an entire plate of cookies and, yes, washing the dishes… all of those are also important components to living a happy life for most people.
Or at least that success comes from different sources.
“I finally got the attic cleaned out.”
“I just cooked the perfect lasagna.”
“Man this post took a while to get worked out but it was worth it (assuming blogging isn’t your proverbial bread and butter).”
It’s almost as if dudes are people. Imagine that.
Yeah there’s a surprising amount of people that have a problem with that. Odd I know.
Not only is correlation not causation.
There’s also a common misconception that the situation is reversible, which it very often is not.
If your partner in any way expresses a dissatisfaction in doing too much of the chores in and around the house, you trying to step in and doing more of these chores will not necessarily result in your partner being any happier…