This
month I will be married 11 years. It's hard to believe until I look back at the
pictures of me and my husband and see how young we looked when we started
dating back at Chapel Hill.
I'm pretty lucky. Greg is good about pitching in at home. Okay, so his idea of
cooking dinner is ordering pizza, but those days when he vacuums the house,
washes the dishes and empties the dishwasher make up for it. Or do they?
A new study by the University
of Michigan found a husband creates an extra seven hours of housework a
week for women. The same study found men have it made: "A wife saves men
from about an hour of housework a week". (I can't wait to go home and tell
him that!)
This
is all based on detailed data from the federally funded Panel Study of Income
Dynamics. Yes, this is a scientific study.
But here's the interesting
part, since 1976 the amount of housework done by women in the U.S.
has dropped considerably. Back then "women did an average
of 26 hours of housework a week, compared to about 17 hours in 2005. Men did
about six hours of housework a week in 1976, compared to 13 hours in 2005."
But the study found the
situation is worse for women after couples have children. The study found,
"Married women with more than three kids did an average of about 28 hours
of housework a week. Married men with more than three kids, by comparison,
logged only about 10 hours of housework a week."
What do you guys think? Are
your spouses pitching in more these days?
By the way, I’ve made it to
the big time! I get to appear in Jason
DeRusha’s video e-mail talking about this topic today. You'll love to hear his excuses
for not pitching in more around his house.
