Chore Wars: Everybody Loses

It's obvious no one likes to do chores. Who likes to spend their Saturday washing dishes (boring), cleaning the bathroom (gross), or mowing the lawn (too much exercise)? I would rather be watching TV, thank you very much. As a woman, I felt immediate relief for my near future that it's looking a lot like rainbows and sunshine because men are doing more chores than ever before. Hurrah! A recent study shows that men did about six hours of housework a week in 1976, compared with about 13 hours in 2005. In comparison, women did an average of 26 hours of housework a week in 1976, compared with about 17 hours in 2005. Gender stereotypes? So quaint, so archaic. You can stop thinking of women with brooms or dish soap now. It's also comforting to know that while women are still in the lead, if this trend keeps going, we might actually balance out. Breathe a sigh everyone (but maybe not men). 

Marketing companies have cleverly picked up on this trend. P&G have started targeting male customers for their home products. One way that P&G have achieved this is to, for lack of a better word, “dumb down” the process of chores. This year, P&G introduced Tide Pods which eliminates the need for pouring and measuring. They've also introduced the Bounce dryer bar, which is a fabric softener installed in the dryer that lasts for months.

In addition, just in time for football season, Tide, a National Football League sponsor, put New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees on its sports-gear detergent bottles. Thebrand signed up TV host and husband Nick Lachey as a spokesman. I'm guessing this has to do with associating men with chores and making chores “masculine.”

You know things aren't a fluke when even marketing companies are picking up the good news. Things are looking pretty bright for women everywhere. It’s the 21st century. We're allowed to vote. We’re allowed to have jobs. We can voice our opinions, get an education. It seems as though we’re (almost) equal, right? Yes, we hear about the occasional gender pay gap, the occasional uneven distribution of household chores, but nothing too big. Generally speaking, men are contributing more to chores. Everyone's happier. Or are they?

Here's where the universe plays a little joke on us. A recent Norwegian study found that the divorce rates for couples who share housework are fifty percent higher than for couples in which the wife assumes the sole responsibility for household chores. “The more a man does in the home, the higher the divorce rate,” said Thomas Hansen, co-author of the study.

Although the researchers couldn't find a cause and effect relationship between a man's duties at home and divorce rates, it could be a sum of other factors, including a modern perception of marriage. Does this mean that couples who share housework value marriage less, or that women nagging their partners about helping out around the house may lead to divorce more? We don't know. But I guess not everyone's happy after all.

So thanks, universe. So much for equality between the sexes. Do we now have to choose between chore equality and marriage? It now seems like it. Maybe it's not rainbows and sunshine for the near future anymore because in a divorce, everyone loses. But in a world where women and men still can't divide up chores evenly, everyone also loses. If this is a sad reality of life, and these two notions cannot reconcile themselves, then I don't think we'll ever reach an age of equality. And it would be a sad day indeed.