Whose roles change the most after marriage: his, or hers? A century or more ago, a woman might not have lived on her own, or been in the workforce before marrying. By 1998, 70% of single woman participated in the workforce. In 1900, only 6 percent of married women worked outside the home. Among wives with children at home, very few worked at all. Almost half of single women held jobs, but they usually stopped working when they married, and most never worked outside the home again. By 1998, more than 60 percent of all married women living with their husbands worked for pay outside the family home.
By 2007, a married woman’s income was on average higher than the husband’s income. At the same time, 70-80% of women living with a spouse or partner (with or without children) reported being the primary grocery shoppers and meal-preppers for their household.
Are married women, in spite of taking advantage of all the career and work opportunities available to them, still feeling largely responsible for household chores?
For some women, “running” the household can be burdensome. Their husbands, while they may do chores when asked, don’t always see what is to be done and do it without being asked. Bradbury et al found that the division of chores, and even more, having an agreed-upon system of dividing the chores made a difference in how well couples got along on a day-to-day basis.
Also revealing is that a Pew Research study found that “sharing household chores” ranked third of nine things considered important to a successful marriage – right behind faithfulness and a happy sexual relationship…and ahead of adequate income, housing, shared interests, etc. Sixty-two percent of adults (men, women, old, young, married, and single) considered sharing household chores “rather important” to a successful marriage. This was only important to 47% of adults in 1990 and had gained 15 percentage points by 2007.
The division of household duties, while trending toward equal sharing, isn’t quite there yet. A study by University of Maryland researchers found that fathers, on average, did 4.4 hours per week of household chores in 1965, and 9.6 hours per week in 2003. Time spent on childcare went from 2.5 hours per week in 1965 to an average of 7 hours in 2003. Mothers, on the other hand, were spending 18 hours per week on household chores and 14 hours per week on childcare in 2003, clocking in at essentially double their husband’s time.
A man’s role also changes to some degree. However, just as he might not see the chores to be done, he also might not understand why his wife begins to struggle with the division of labor, and indeed, her identity in the marriage.
I like hugs. I like kisses. But what I really love is help with the dishes.
– author unknown –
Bradbury, Wendy Klein, Carolina Izquierdo, Thomas N. “The Difference Between a Happy Marriage and Miserable One: Chores.” The Atlantic, 1 Mar. 2013, https://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/03/the-difference-between-a-happy-marriage-and-miserable-one-chores/273615/.
Fry, R., & Cohn, D. (2010, January 19). Women, Men and the New Economics of Marriage. Pew Research Center’s Social & Demographic Trends Project. https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2010/01/19/women-men-and-the-new-economics-of-marriage/
Katherine Schaeffer. (2019, September 24). Among U.S. couples, women do more cooking and grocery shopping than men. Pew Research Center. Retrieved January 29, 2021, from https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/09/24/among-u-s-couples-women-do-more-cooking-and-grocery-shopping-than-men/
Pew Research Center (2007, July 18). Modern Marriage. Pew Research Center’s Social & Demographic Trends Project. https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2007/07/18/modern-marriage/
The First Measured Century: Book: Section 2.8. (n.d.). Retrieved January 29, 2021, from https://www.pbs.org/fmc/book/2work8.htm