Housework Makes Men Happy

Honest: this isn’t a story ghostwritten by wives tired of seeing the dishes piled up in the sink.

Men are happier and have less stress overall when they perform a greater share of the household chores, according to Cambridge University researchers. MSNBC reported July 7 that while the study authors initially believed that men would find tasks like cooking, shopping, and cleaning “demeaning,” they found that their expectation was “completely wrong.”

The well-being of men is significantly reduced when the housework is done mainly by their wives, but this is not the case for women, the researchers found. “Men who leave the chores to women may be subject to more complaints than men who do their share of home chores,” the researchers speculate. “It is also plausible that some men want a more equitable role in the home and their well-being is reduced when the pressure of their jobs gets in the way.”

Researchers Jacqueline Scott and Anke Plagnol, who published their findings in a new book, “Gendered Lives: Gender Inequalities in Production and Reproduction,” found that women still do most of the housework in 68 percent of homes, while men did the bulk of chores in 9 percent and the housework was split evenly in about one in five households. “Men today play a far greater role in home and child care than their fathers or grandfathers. It might help change move faster if the benefits of a more equitable divide became more widely known,” the authors wrote.

(Photo © Plutor via Flickr)