A Hopeful Sign That in The Future Housework Will Be More Evenly Shared by Men and Women

Previous studies have shown that in married-couple families where both spouses work, women continue to bear the largest load of household chores. But a new study, co-authored by Frank Stafford, a professor of economics and research professor in the Survey Research Center at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan, finds that the division of labor between boys and girls doing household chores is nearly equal.

The authors asked men and women to document how much time they spent on core housework; the daily drudgery of washing dishes, sweeping, and vacuuming. It doesn’t include housework done by a cleaning service or home activities such as gardening and child care. They found that women spent an average of 15.8 hours per week on core housework compared to 7.8 hours for men.

Buth authors found that for teenage members of the household the gender disparity is shrinking. In 2002, teenage boys did 21.4 minutes of housework per day, while girls did 40.5 minutes of housework per day. But the amount of housework done by boys compared to girls has become relatively equal. In 2014, boys did 26.8 minutes of housework per day, while girls did 30 minutes.

The full study, “Change and Continuity in Housework Roles of United States Men and Women,” was presented at an American Economics Association conference. The study, which was co-authored by Ping Li of South China Normal University, will be published in the Journal of Time Use Research. It may be accessed here.