Comments on Sex, Housework, and Gender Parity

It'd be interesting to see this cross-referenced with how much more money the men are bringing in to the homes, and how much of it is being spent by the wives.

That sucks. Those women need to marry better men.

I'm sure jewelry is as, if not more, acceptable than household chores.

I think the biggest problem is that men are not socialized to care about such things.

Taking relationships out the equation households that I know that are mostly female are almost always cleaner and nicer then households that are mostly male. Women are taught that having a clean well decorated house is part of being a grown-up, men are not. When you get right down to it men are willing to live in filth, women are not.

Until that changes, there is no built-in incentive for men to care about housework, so they will only tend to do it if other incentives are present such as sex.

Erica, you make some good points, but frankly, I mostly focused on, men do more housework, we all get laid more! It's really win, win.

And secondly, if women don't want to do so much housework ... then don't do it. Or don't marry or procreate with men who won't pick up their slack. It's bullshit to blame men because frankly, women aren't deaf mutes who have no say in the matter.

You want your man to do more around the house? Speak up. If he doesn't do it? Then either clean up or deal with the mess. Or hire a maid. A ton of women I know CLEAN UP their husband's CLEANING UP. It's retarded. It's okay if the kitchen isn't spotless. You're not Martha Stewart. You want help around the house? You gotta start to let shit go.

@1, Your sexism aside, the amount of money should not be relevant as much as the number of hours worked outside the home. Ideally each party should contribute a roughly equal number of hours to the fmaily. So if one partner works outside the home for 40 hours a week but he other partner does 60 hours a week of work in the house and with the kids you have a disparity.

The PI is becoming significantly better than the Times. They've consistently covered labor and student activism while the Times ignores it.

Why I'm saying this here, I don't know... I've never heard of the Stranger giving good coverage to labor or student activism. (SEIU 6 shuts down a major intersection during rush hour, and the only question the Stranger can muster is "What were you knitting?" Negotiations the next day tentatively resulted in a good healthcare plan for 750 workers, by the way.)

I would have thought that the headline writers were trying to spin the story in a way that would help women by motivating men to do even more. But my head was so close to exploding with righteous feminist anger that I wasn't able to think that. Couldn't think anything in fact, I was so angry.

Maybe I'll be able to work it out tomorrow, once I calm down.

Oh the silly heterosexual lifestyle, it's such a TV sitcom!

This is completely anecdotal, but now that I'm in my 30's, I'd say most of my male peers keep a much cleaner home than female. I'm talking about singles - I can't really attest to any couples' habits. Maybe I just know an odd cross-section of folks?

I also, however, knew a ton of boys growing up who's mothers were doing their laundry and basically wiping their asses for them well into their teen years, and probably have developed an extremely twisted idea of what housework means.

Yeah, I know right? I mean, what good is persuading people to behave differently if it's not done through guilt and calls to pure, unrequited altruism?

Why, just the other day I read an article which suggested that Americans might want to drive less, because it would save them money on gas and save them the stress of dealing with traffic. Which is OMG SO FUCKING WRONG, because they should sell driving less as a selfless environmental act, and as nothing else whatsoever. To suggest people act selflessly for selfish reasons! The audacity!

@4,

Could it be that men don't care about such things because they expect women to take of it? My father didn't care enough about the cleanliness of his home enough to do anything about it except to point out messes to me or his wife.

@5,

Or just dump him.

It's interesting, I've seen this same issue addressed on "feminist blogosphere" sites plenty of times, framed as "Maybe I'll be in the mood more when you do more of your share of the work around the house" and nobody seemed to object to that take on things.

While interesting, it's not enough to address only the absolute number of hours spent on a single activity. What else are / aren't people doing with their hours?

One might reason that because we live in a sexist world men have greater earning power and shouldn't spend any time doing household chores. If he's economical, and not running for political office, he should hire an illegal to do them. If he is running for office he should hire a wife.

Is it sexist to say that, in general, men have a greater appetite for sex than women do? My personal belief is that there are biological reasons for woman being more motivated to clean and for men wanting sex more.

MUCH of what we are talking about is like a fetish.

MOST of the cleaning freaks get a thrill out of it.

I keep a great house, with low time loss and very focused. No mania, and it leaves a LOT of time and ENERGY for fucking, three four times a week.

RECONSIDER all the housecleaning hype. Take back your time and your life. No you do not need to wipe the house down two times a week, and an unmade bed is not sin incarnate.

BUT then, who will buy all that cleaning shit on TV???

One of the first lessons most of us guys learn, very early in life, is that if you do a shitty job on something you don't really want to do in the first place, you won't be asked to do it again. It's Pavlovian, really - as long as "bad" behavior gets rewarded, why change? Change the rewards system, i.e., you'll get laid more if you do a good job, an we're eminently capable of figuring that out too.

Because of course women never use sex as a bargaining tool. Nope. Never.

Glad we cleared that up.

This is completely anecdotal, but now that I'm in my 30's, I'd say most of my male peers keep a much cleaner home than female.

Eh, my anecdata contradicts yours; most of the guys I know are perfectly happy with some relatively minimal threshold of clean that, unfortunately, always seems to be lower than their girlfriends'/wives'. Personally, living on my own, I'd leave the house messier than my GF generally prefers and be perfectly happy with that.

MEN are hormonal to the max from 16 to 36 - just old mother nature making sure we inseminate something at every chance.

And, in my observations, even the most tuned women never figure it out.

And most men never tell just how horny they are during that 20 year run.... remember beating off two/three times a day and fucking all night? I sure do.

What's the definition of housework they used? Depending on how that's defined it could skew the results. Does it include things like taking care of taxes or investment or paying bills? Car-related stuff like changing the oil?

Good God. Can you imagine being ECB's boyfriend?

"You don't help out enough around the house, you lazy asshole!"

...

"See? You're only helping around the house more now because you want to get laid, you selfish asshole!"

You know, it's funny, because to be quite frank, you need to think about motivations.

Sex works fairly well. From a male perspective, saying that the house is cleaner, that the dishes get done, that the kids don't get in accidents works very badly compared to a blunt message to men that they get more sex.

So, what's the problem with the MSM translating it into something guys care about? It got our attention and we do care about that.

Even if the sports commercials about Tivo and how it means you can respond to the wife are particularly lame.

Erica, it's not that couples do (or should) use sex as a barter mechanism. It's that most married men, especially those with children, slack on housekeeping and parenting and the work falls on their spouses. It sucks, but it's what happens.

When we guys take on our fair share of the work, our spouses both have more energy and feel less unfairly burdened and thus more positive about us across the board.

But what do I know, I've only been married for fifteen years.

Speaking as the big fat gay guy I just wonder why anyone would care. Look, nobody, male or female, has a relationship with a survey group. If you as a woman do not want to be in a relationship with a man who does not do his chores, guess what! In the good ole US of A, you do not have to be! No one is forcing women at gun point to be in relationships with men who are slobs.

And guess what else.. .there are heterosexual people who really are into this kind of traditional relationship where the woman is Donna Reed. I wouldn't be into that, but more power to them. It is a free country.

Before I moved in with my fella I told him that I was fine never living together, if he wanted me to move in he had to do half the work or pay me for the extra hours at a premium rate. And no, we weren't going to live in a pile of pizza boxes, either. Seven years later things have settled into a less than ideal state- the place is always messier than I'd like it (a little) and, counting bill-paying and everything, I put in (a little) more time than he does, but mostly he pitches in really well. My point is lay down the line at the outset, and a good fella will step up. Mostly.

@6
"the amount of money should not be relevant"

I think it's very relevant. Not sure why it's sexist to ask if the study factored that in or not. Is it because I'm not spouting feminist aphorisms?

If you don't have kids, what on earth is taking 46 hours a week to keep the house clean?

@12, Possibly, but it seems that most of the men I know are more than willing to have dirty dishes around, not vacuum, fail to garden, etc, then women. Men and women are socialized to view maturity and success differently. For most men a clean house has no more barring on their self worth then having nice curtains.

Personally, as a man, I hate to have to filth around me. I am cluttered for sure, as my junk room can attest, but I do not tolerate having a filthy bathroom, kitchen, etc. But I was raised to view a reasonable clean house, especially ion the parts that others see, as a requirement for being considered an adult. I also try to make sure that my house is reasonably apportioned.

I think that most men tend to get that women are their equals. I think the next step is to get them to see housework and the like as being worthy of attention.

#19 - yeah, could be an odd section of folks I know, granted. I guess it all depends on how your raised, more than anything. I had two working parents, so we did everything for ourselves in my house (cleaning, clothes, chores, etc.), and I'm glad for it. I LIKED doing laundry when I was a kid - when you're 6 years old and you get to use a huge machine that goes WHUMP WHUMP WHUMP, it's kinda cool.

Once you have kids and start dividing chores based on one spouse being home while one is at work, it gets more complicated.

I can't say I take objection to the article necessarily, I just can't relate to it at all. It's 2008, if your partner doesn't know how to use a bottle of bleach and a cleaning brush, well, teach him. If he doesn't want to, or doesn't care, then either deal with it, or fucking fix your situation. "Rewarded with sex"? Sounds like you're relationship has some issues running a little deeper than household chores.

If pushing a mop or knocking together some bookshelves is what it takes to keep the little missus putting out, I guess its the price that useful men like us have to pay....

My guess is that it isn't a "sex for housework" transaction, but that ladies who are spending an extra 10-20 hours a week doing housework are too tired to initiate sex. The more free time a lady has that she isn't doing dishes or laundry, the more likely she'll fill it with something recreational like reading, tv, or sex.

They needed a study to get this out in the open, really?

I've been having sex with the vacuum cleaner. More vacuuming, more sex. There's your corelation.

@27, because relationships should not be about money, and because there is no true market for 'housework'.

How much, per hour, would you be willing to pay for a good parent for your kids. You might be able to get a nanny for 12 bucks an hour but anyone who says thats the same has never met Paris Hilton.

i want a clean house, but my woman wants the house cleaner than i do.

frankly, her level of discomfort with dirt is pathological. she NEEDS to clean more than i do. she polishes the stainless steel dishwasher once a week. she has a professional window washing kit with a squeegee on a 12' extention. she vacuums for over an hour.

i've been explicit that i cannot meet her standards without going insane, so fuck it. i still help out 10x as much as her ex, so she's ok with it.

or IS she?

Bob @21 has a valid point, though. Somehow, "grabbing a bottle of bleach and a brush" qualifies as housework, but changing the oil on the car, rotating the tires, fixing things around the house. mowing the lawn, balancing the checkbook, etc., etc., do not.

oh, for the love of god. if you want your man to clean more/less/better/longer, why don't you just negotiate it like a grownup?

we need a study for this?

just work the shit out, people!

"So they went from doing just over a third as much as women to half as much. And women still do most of the “invisible” household work, including scheduling appointments, buying the gifts their children take to birthday parties, and arranging holiday gatherings.)"

Um. That's not work. That's being stupid.

All those are optional things that don't impact child welfare, IMHO.

If they don't have bits of cut up straw up their nose, they don't need to go to see the doctor.

(actually, I'm the one that always took Ian to dentist appointments, but you get my point)

@38, I too wonder why women put up with this shit. Sure in the 50's the opportunities for women to make have a career with quite small. But today more women then men go to college and almost all jobs are equal opportunity. Not to mention that a visit to the sperm bank is a hell of a lot cheaper then a visit to the surrogate.

If women refused to be in relationships or to marry douchebags, that would go along way to changing behavior.

after you do all that extra househould stuff your to tired to get on top and do all the work again.

ECB, people are victims of their own choices to enter into relationships that arent satisfying.

A similar study finds that women nag three times as much as men, even when men do the same amount of household chores.

It also found that men who had nagging wives would rather not have sex with them.
Thus, the more they nag, the less household chores, plus the less incentive sex becomes.

Finally, 50% of marriages end in divorce. Go figure.

If my BF would just vacuum, empty the cat pans, and clean up his own messes(other than dishes;I take care of that), he'd be getting 200% more blowjobs, morning or night (whatever you want, baby!)

Medina has pretty much covered it from my male perspective. Wait, men also have a tendency to look for younger women after that divorce. Is it because (a) men all a'holes or (b) because men enjoy talking to someone who's still open to other ideas and enjoys having sex?

How dare you people imply that men are lazier than women?!?? *outrage*

This is why I was all for hiring a maid, and the one we got, ay-ay-aye, Marissa, boy she is Muy Caliente... see problem fixed. I get wank material, all I had to agree to is hire a gardener to help the wife with her foliage. He seems like a nice young lad, and her moods are better lately.

I'm a hetero male and I'm cleaner than any woman I know bar none. But I appreciate the study.

Fucking Virgos. . . .

jay - congrats - mutant - or - liar

so... my girlfriend is messier than i am. does that mean we're weird? is my brain broken? do i have a complex? am i not a man? someone tell me why she and i are individuals that don't fit the cliches!?

Get out your measuring cups and we'll play a new game
Come to the front of the class and we'll measure your brain
We'll give you a complex and we'll give it a name

AMB - you asked why it was sexist to see if the study talked about how much of the man's money the woman spent. It's sexist because your view of "man earns money, woman spends it" is completely outdated.

In 2002, only 13% of married households were "traditional" (married couples with children where only the man worked). I'm sure there's more recent data out there, but this was what I found with a 2 second Google search. Now, given the wage gap by gender, it's likely that on average the man does make more. But, as @6 suggested, it seems a little ridiculous to think that if both spouses work an equal amount, and the man makes more, the woman should be doing 65% of the housework.

@6 is right, they should have looked at total Work + Housework hours.

Stories like this make me glad I'm gay.

Single men sometimes keep their houses clean, other guys could just give a rats ass if they walk through piles of dirty clothes.

Women who want their men to help vacuum and fold clothes should marry the single men who spend their weekends vacuuming and folding clothes.

If you date a guy who is happy as a clam in a filthy house, why expect him to change after you marry him.

Oh, and the single guys who spend their weekends vacuuming and folding clothes usually hook up with sloppy guys who fix the car and go camping and fishing a lot.

Married women who spend time vacuuming should get over themselves and realize that their man is out in the driveway with his head under the hood just so he doesn't have to be near his bitchy neat-freak wife who never wants to do anything until the house is perfect, and then is too tired to do anything after.

Shock! Horror! Newspaper spices up dull story with sex angle!

So why are all these women not DTMFA? If guys aren't doing their share, don't have kids with them.

Yeah, I'm that guy who goes camping and fishing - and hunting - and spends time under the hood, when I'm not making dinner on the grill (which also doesn't seem to count as housework). Also the dumbass who makes sure the hundreds of dollars' worth of very expensive knives are razor sharp, and yells because you put them in the fucking dishwasher. But doesn't yell because you used that same knife to pull weeds out of the gravel in the driveway because, oh, what's the point. Yeah, I'm the guy who takes out the trash and shovels the snow without a complaint, but that's not "housework." I'm the guy risking his neck on the roof to clean the gutters, but that's not "housework." Well, then, if it's not housework, WHAT THE FUCK IS IT?

So "man" chores include taking out the garbage every week, cleaning the gutter twice a year, BBQing every few weeks in the summer, and shoveling snow... wait it only snows twice a year in seattle doesn't it? That's totally comparable to doing all the house-hold shopping, cooking, and cleaning.

Personally, I'd trade cleaning the bathroom for washing the car any day (except we never wash our car).

Luckily my partner and I are not stuck in the old ruts of "man's jobs, woman's jobs". Strangely enough, our sex life is great...

Also, 5280 I'm sensing some bitterness. Put the knives in the dishwasher did you? Awwww...

@57, I like how your first three contributions are leisure activities and of marginal usefulness in modern society.

#24 has got it. That's a practical explanation for this kind of reporting. There is definitely a logic to it. If you ever get a long-term partner, Erica, you'll see.

My plan for marriage is everyone participates for the base "have to do it" chores... like dishes and mowing the lawn. Anything beyond that falls on me if I want it cleaner.
I dunno, I'm a woman and I find cleaning theraputic. Put on loud music and dance around while you vaccum. Get some cardio in while you dust. Does that make me sexist?...

the article I've read about this seems to suggest not that women are offering sex to men as an incentive to help out more with housework, but that when men DO help out with housework, women are more likely to have sex with them. It's kind of hard to get horny about someone who, like the article suggested, is sitting on his ass on the couch when the whole house is a mess and you're vacuuming. you're not going to feel too great about someone who values your time that little, even if you believe that you love them.

however, i do agree that they could have said "couples" have more sex if the housework is equal, instead of "men" get more sex.

#63

And what if he has a cheerful greeting and a big hug and kiss and is in his silky underwear with a hardon? Might you turn off the machine for an hour?

You know, like the books tell the dames.
Seductive, enticing, wanting it, all gooey.

Becky, are you an acountant?

You know, most couples living together have a division of labor. If both halves are happy with the negotiated chores, then who cares? If they're not, why aren't they renegotiating?

#65: nope, not an "acountant." my dad was, though. hm..

i think a lot of women assume that men should know that things like sweeping the floors at least once a week are something that everyone understands the value of. when, in fact, they don't necessarily. also, it's kind of shitty when you tell your guy that they need to be a little more proactive in pitching in, and they agree with you, but then change nothing. no one wants to be a nag.

#65: nope, not an "acountant." my dad was, though. hm..

i think a lot of women assume that men should know that things like sweeping the floors at least once a week are something that everyone understands the value of. when, in fact, they don't necessarily. also, it's kind of shitty when you tell your guy that they need to be a little more proactive in pitching in, and they agree with you, but then change nothing. no one wants to be a nag.

#65: nope, not an "acountant." my dad was, though. hm..

i think a lot of women assume that men should know that things like sweeping the floors at least once a week are something that everyone understands the value of. when, in fact, they don't necessarily. also, it's kind of shitty when you tell your guy that they need to be a little more proactive in pitching in, and they agree with you, but then change nothing. no one wants to be a nag.

oops. sorry.