March 6, 2008, - 5:03 pm
Study: American Men More Whipped Than Ever
By Debbie Schlussel
Hey married men, whether or not your wife works, you are doing more and more of the work at home. But, apparently, it–not working hard to support your family–is the only way you will get more sex from your wife. Just hope you don’t end up like the husband of the NOW chick (amazing she goes that way).
This same report seems to come out every year, so I’m skeptical about the chores/sex reward ratio:
The average dad has gradually been getting better about picking himself up off the sofa and pitching in, according to a new report in which a psychologist suggests the payoff for doing more chores could be more sex.
The report, released Thursday by the Council on Contemporary Families, summarizes several recent studies on family dynamics. One found that men’s contribution to housework had doubled over the past four decades; another found they tripled the time spent on child care over that span.
“More couples are sharing family tasks than ever before, and the movement toward sharing has been especially significant for full-time dual-earner couples,” the report says. “Men and women may not be fully equal yet, but the rules of the game have been profoundly and irreversibly changed.”
Some couples have forged partnerships they consider fully equitable.
“We’ll both talk about how we’re so lucky to have someone who does more than their share,” said Mary Melchoir, a Washington-based fundraiser for the National Organization for Women, who – like her lawyer husband – works full-time while raising 6-year-old triplets.
“He’s the one who makes breakfast and folds the laundry,” said Melchoir, 47. “I’m the one who fixes things around the house.”
Joshua Coleman, a San Francisco-area psychologist and author of “The Lazy Husband: How to Get Men to Do More Parenting and Housework,” said equitable sharing of housework can lead to a happier marriage and more frequent sex. . . .
The report’s co-authors, sociologists Scott Coltrane of the University of California, Riverside and Oriel Sullivan of Ben Gurion University, said they were addressing a perception that women’s gains in the workplace were not being matched by gains at home.
“The typical punch line of many news stories has been that even though women are working longer hours on the job and cutting back their own housework, men are not picking up the slack,” Coltrane and Sullivan wrote.
They said this perception was based on unrealistic expectations and underestimated the degree of change “going on behind the scenes” since the 1960s. The change, they said, “is too great a break from the past to be dismissed as a slow and grudging evolution.”
Among the findings they cited:
* In the U.S., time-use diary studies show that since the ’60s, men’s contribution to housework doubled from about 15 percent to more than 30 percent of the total. Over the same period, the average working mother reduced her weekly housework load by two hours.
* Between 1965 and 2003, men tripled the amount of time they spent on child care. During the same period, women also increased the time spent with their children, suggesting mutual interest in a more hands-on approach to child-raising.
Sullivan and Coltrane predict men’s contributions will increase further as more women take jobs.
Is this blurring of the gender roles a good thing? Only if you want your men to be women and your women to be men.
Tags: Ben Gurion University, California, Council on Contemporary Families, Ever By Debbie Schlussel Hey, fundraiser, Joshua Coleman, lawyer, Mary Melchoir, National Organization for Women, Psychologist, Riverside, San Francisco, Scott Coltrane, United States, University of California, Washington
Yesterday, I came across one of our clients with a hyphenated name – a MAN with a hyphenated name. He took his wife’s last name when they got married. Pathetic. This whole hyphenated thing makes me nuts anyway. Itís a simple decision ñ just pick one name and stick with it. Have you seen the sports jerseys on soccer playing yuppie spawn? The hyphenated names are so long they donít fit on the shirts.
dm60462 on March 6, 2008 at 5:54 pm