Shacked-up couples share housework better than marrieds
A study by sociologists from George Mason University and North Carolina State University concludes that unmarried couples that live together divide housework more evenly than married couples.
According to Davis, the key finding of the study is that it suggests the institution of marriage changes the division of labor. Couples with an egalitarian view on gender--seeing men and women as equal--are more likely to divide the household chores equally. However, in married relationships, even if an egalitarian viewpoint is present, men still report doing less housework than their wives.Link (via Collision Detection)"Marriage as an institution seems to have a traditionalizing effect on couples--even couples who see men and women as equal," says Davis.
While the researchers did not follow cohabitating couples over time to see if their division of housework changed after marriage, their study provides a "snapshot" in time of couples all over the world.
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Why can't journalists understand: correlation does not equal causation? Couldn't it be that "couples with an egalitarian view on gender" are more likely to co-habitate and less likely to marry? ARGH!
Mightn't it be the other way 'round — that couples who are less focused on traditional gender roles are more likely to cohabit? My sweetie and I have been living together for ten years, and are planning to be wed next summer — I doubt the housework division will suddenly skew.
did this study account for life before/after children?
Perhaps it has more to do with people deciding to wait till they get married before moving in together? New habitat, new dynamics.
I'm going to have to concur with jere7my. My wife and I lived together for 8 years before we finally legalized it.
People told us it would change our relationship, and it really didn't. We still organize responsibilities around who is better (or sometimes, less sucky or less unreliable) at a specific job rather than around traditional gender roles.
Sometimes responsibilities map to old frameworks and sometimes they don't—and only occasionally does my wife claim that something is my job because it's "man work" (it's usually something gross that neither of us wants to do).
But I do know lots of people who are trapped by narratives that they haven't really even thought about. They just sort of accept that they get married and become "men" and "women" and they "make a family." It's weird, but I won't begrudge them it either, because it seems simpler sometimes.
Of course then I'd be in charge of the bills—and oh, the trouble.
I wonder if the study controlled for whether or not a couple has children? Of course there are lots of unmarried families with kids, and married couples with no kids...but planning to have a baby is a very popular reason for couples to get married. And the additional work and emotional stress of caring for a child tends be primarily taken on by mothers, even in families that try to be egalitarian in other ways. There is an awful lot of pressure from extended family, from parents' support groups (which are usually mothers' support groups. Sometimes explicitly so.) It is a contributing issue that most employers give fathers such a hard time about taking family leave to care for infants, or even adjusting work schedules to deal with parent-teacher conferences or pediatrician visits.
Adrian
One of the questions asked: "On average, how many hours a week do you personally spend on household work, not including childcare of leisure activities"? And there may be a problem cutting off where household work ends and leisure activity begins (so if the husband spent time building a new entertainment center for the home, would that be leisure or strictly household work?).
The questions on the respondent's views on gender ideology do encounter the problem of response bias, at least in the more industrialized countries.
According to the data, Czech men do more hours of work than Czech women (although it may be a misprint since the percent totals do not add up to 100, it's like 60.8%).
A traditionalizing effect? I wonder if they checked into the division of labor vs. how long a couple has lived together. My guess is that it's not marriage that has a traditionalizing effect on couples so much as it's comfort in a relationship. The married couples have probably been together, on average, longer than the simply cohabitating couples, which would have increased comfort in the relationship, and when someone is comfortable in a relationship, well, that's when they stop leaving the room to fart. Or, perhaps, stop doing the dishes as much as they should.
Jere7my makes a good point, also.
Why should the house work be equally divided?
Is it bad for a stay at home dad to do more house work but less bring-home-the-bacon work?
I think the only issue is conflict. If a difference in house work is resented and that isn't discussed, it's bad for the couple.
shoot... my hunny bunny happily washes my drawers and does the dishes! we're not married. tho, sometimes i'm conned into washin' a dish or two. she likes housework, i hate it. besides, i get to watch her swing her hiney when she's moppin'!!!!!!
"More equally" does not equal "better".
In other words, Ivan's got the right idea.
They did a regression analysis and controlled for household size and gender ideology; they didn't do a a longitudinal study on couples.
See preprint.
all truth about marriage :)
http://beforeandaftermarriage.com