Husbands create an extra 7 hours of housework for their wives every week, new research has revealed.
Researchers from the University of Michigan recently found that on average, husbands create an extra seven hours of housework for their wives – every week.
The team looked at housework hours in relation to income dynamics in a study titled "Who Really Does The Dishes".
Overestimation
They said: "Married men are likely to report greater weekly hours of core housework for themselves than hours reported for them by their wives."
The findings revealed that the women that participated in the study averaged more than 18 hours of housework per week, while men averaged roughly seven hours per week.
So that means husbands create 7 extra hours of housework a week for their wives!
As well as this, the study also found that the number of children in a household and the level of the wife's education played a significant factor in their results.
Age vs attitude
Age didn't really seem to matter in regards to the division of household chores.
But, having looked at the findings, the researchers suggested that as women get older, their attitudes towards the division of chores within the household changes.
What might play a role though is bias – with the researchers concluding that men could be overreporting their own hours, or wives underreporting.
Gender imbalance
As researchers have studied gender imbalances in how couples share housework, one common rationalization they hear from men is that women have higher standards of cleanliness or are simply better at managing housework.
Can you believe them?
A European study previously found that housework is the most unequally shared of the three most common forms of unpaid care, the other two being childcare and long-term care for older people and people with disabilities and other chronic conditions.
