DadTalk

Don’t forget the housework

Divorce is twice as likely when husbands neglect housework: An academic study has found that marriages are much more stable when men contribute to housework, shopping and childcare.

Researchers say it could be an overlooked factor in explaining why divorce rates rose in recent decades as more women entered the workplace.

The study looked at household details for 3,540 married British couples who had their first baby in 1970. The families were interviewed again when their children turned five, ten and sixteen. 21 per cent of the parents had divorced by the time their eldest child left school.

Further analysis found that the majority of fathers did little or no cleaning, shopping, babysitting or bedtime duties while just a quarter took part in three or more household and childcare tasks.

In traditional families where the husband was the breadwinner and the wife stayed at home to raise their children and carry out all of the housework, the research calculated the probability of divorce at 3.3 per cent.

Where the woman also had a paid job, the likelihood that they would split up rose to 6.5 per cent.

But if the father also carried out his fair share of chores, that risk fell again to 4.5 per cent and if he also looked after their child while his wife worked, it dropped still further back to 3.2 per cent.

Read more in the Telegraph.

Could there be a connection between housework, sex & divorce?

From the ‘evolution of dad project’ – Dr Michael Kimmel, the real truth about most men…and housework’ – what do you think?