In these days of gender equality, it’s only natural for a wife to want her husband to his fair share of the household chores. But there might be some unintended consequences of this sharing that neither of you expected if the results of American research are to be believed.
The research has revealed that men who do more of the housework have less sex than the ones who do more traditionally masculine chores.
The chores most associated with women are cooking, cleaning and shopping, while gardening, taking care of the car and paying the bills are often seen as the province of the male partner.
The joint US-Spanish study was published in the American Sociological Review and is entitled Egalitarianism, Housework and Sexual Frequency in Marriage. The study analysed data taken from the National Survey of Families and Households and only involved straight, married couples in the US.
According to the research, men claimed to have had sex an average of 5.2 times in the month before the survey was carried out. Women reported that they had had sex 5.6 times.
However, the study revealed that both men and women in those homes where the division of household labour was based on more traditional gendered roles said they were having more sex.
The researchers, from the Centre for Advanced Studies at the Juan March Institute in Madrid and the University of Washington, noted that their finds suggest that gendered scripts around sexual activity exist in certain households. And they believe adopting the roles most traditionally associated with men and women are important to couples’ sexual desire.
The study’s findings might be seized upon by men as a way to escape doing their fair share of the housework but the study’s authors concluded that was a recipe for marital discord because women are unhappy when their husbands don’t help around the house.
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