Part II: The State of Affairs
As mentioned in Part I, researchers generally agree that women in heterosexual dual-income households do about twice as much physical labor in the home as men. According to this split, in a typical work week, if a man does 40 hours of work at home, his female partner does sixty-six hours. That’s a lot of hours (26!) available to men to do hobbies, exercise, hang out with friends, sleep, work, or daydream.
Male and Female Coded Roles
Tasks in the home tend to be coded either for the male role or the female role, though a person of any gender can perform male or female-coded roles. Female-coded roles tend to be routine. They must be done day-in and day-out, and if they are missed even once it is typically noticed. Examples include cooking and meal preparation, doing dishes, doing laundry, cleaning, grocery shopping, taking kids to and from school, and pet care. Traditionally male-coded roles tend to be intermittent. If they are skipped once or twice or put off for a week, it rarely has a negative impact. Examples include cutting the grass, managing family finances, reorganizing closets, raking leaves, and changing oil in the car.
Emotional / Cognitive Labor
In the 70s, researchers began to differentiate between physical and emotional or cognitive labor. Mangino says, “Physical tasks are easier to pin down: cooking, shopping, paying bills. Emotional labor is defined as the hidden, often unnoticed tasks necessary to run a home.”
Examples of emotional labor or cognitive labor:
Looking at the school calendar for the whole semester to see when the kids are off, and figuring out who is going to watch them.
Mentally keeping track of when shopping needs to be done and what needs to be purchased.
Knowing who has birthdays and anniversaries coming up and making sure you have gifts and cards ready
Monitoring a parent or grandparent in a care facility
Knowing when the dog needs checkups, where to buy his favorite treats, and when to schedule a grooming appointment.
Going through the kids’ closets and figuring out what to do with the old clothes and how to pay for new clothes.
Cognitive laborers in the home are constantly going over mental to-do lists. This labor is almost always unpaid, and often unrecognized or minimized.
Some Key Statistics
In North-American dual-working homes, women do twice as much housework as their male partners. Women do most of the routine chores, and men do most of the intermittent chores.
The household gender balance is not fixing itself with time. The 65/35 split has remained steady for the past 30+ years.
At age 25, college educated women make 90% the salary of college-educated men. By age 45, college educated women make only 55% the salary of college-educated men.
A 2018 study found that single mothers, on average, completed fewer hours of housework per week than women married to men. (Their houses are not dirtier).
Working mothers today spend as many hours taking care of their children as stay-at-home mothers did in the 1970s.
Queer partnerships tend to be more equal than heterosexual partnerships, however, traditional gender roles can still heavily affect queer relationships.
Some data is disaggregated by race and / or class, which tells a more complex story. For example, three studies found that Black men do more housework than white men, but Black women still do far more housework than Black men. Research on Latinx households concluded that male participation is about the same as in white households.
While data can provide a starting point for our discussions, we must always recognize that it is just a starting point, and our experience is impacted by many more factors than just our gender, including race, class, culture, and many other factors.
The Tender Work of Unpacking Gender Socialization and Household Labor
Beginning to explore how we are impacted by gender socialization can be tender and challenging work. I encourage you to pay attention to your experience as you explore this topic, and to practice compassion with yourself and your partner. If you notice that it feels very daunting to consider this on your own, or if you are finding yourself thinking that this would be very difficult to discuss with your partner, I encourage you to consider seeking help from a therapist comfortable discussing gender roles within partnerships.
Some Questions to Explore By Yourself or with your Partner(s)
What is it like for you to read these statistics about labor division? How did you feel reading this post?
What surprised you?
What resonated with you?
How do you feel about your / our current division of labor?
