The Crawler couldn’t resist the Wall Street Journal headline from yesterday’s paper: “The Sex-Housework Link: Housework Pays Off Between the Sheets.” The WSJ article begins…
Housework may seem like the ultimate romance-killer. But guess what?
A new study shows that for husbands and wives alike, the more housework you do, the more often you are likely to have sex with your spouse.
Earlier studies have hinted at this connection for men; the sight of a husband mopping the floor or doing dishes sparks affection in the hearts of many wives. But the more-housework-equals-more-sex link for wives, documented in a study of 6,877 married couples published online recently in the Journal of Family Issues, is a surprise.
But whoever thought vacuuming was sexy?
But for some high achievers who take a “work hard, play hard” approach to life, researchers say, working hard in one domain produces more energy for others. The study also found a correlation between hours spent on paid work and the frequency of sex in marriage.
“Rather than compromise their sex life” because of time demands at work or at home, “this group of go-getters seems to make sex a priority,” says Constance Gager, lead researcher and an assistant professor of family and child studies at Montclair State University, Montclair, N.J. The study doesn’t measure what proportion of spouses fall into this group, but she believes “they are on the leading edge of couples we expect to see more of in the future.”
More from the authors, one of whom is a sociologist…
Dr. Gager and her co-author, Scott Yabiku, associate professor of sociology at Arizona State University, Tempe, controlled the results for “gender ideology” and found the housework-sex link remained true, regardless of people’s views on roles. Results from the data, taken from the National Survey of Families and Households, were controlled for age, health, duration of couple’s relationship, religion, income, education and marital satisfaction.
The study defined housework as nine chores: cleaning, preparing meals, washing dishes, washing and ironing clothes, driving family members around, shopping, yard work, maintaining cars and paying bills. Wives in the study spent an average 41.8 hours a week on these tasks, compared with 23.4 hours for husbands—a split that is fairly typical, and often regarded by wives as unfair. However, the effects of any fairness concerns among wives weren’t measured in this study.
Outside the home, husbands spent an average 33.8 hours a week on paid work, compared with 19.7 hours for wives. Couples reported having sex 82.7 times a year on average, or 1.6 times a week, about the same as in other studies.
After a long national decline in time spent on housework, the study joins a growing body of research on how chores shape the dynamics of marriage. A survey of 2,020 U.S. adults placed “sharing household chores” as the third most important factor in a successful marriage, behind faithfulness and a happy sexual relationship, says the nonprofit Pew Research Center. That’s a sharp increase; 72% of respondents gave high importance to housework, up from 47% in a comparable study in 1990. In respondents’ minds, housework outranked even such necessities as adequate income and good housing, Pew says.
The article also links to another sociological study:
A 2003 study by Scott Coltrane, a sociology professor at the University of California, Riverside, linked fathers’ housework to more feelings of warmth and affection in their wives. And a survey of 288 husbands, reported in Neil Chethik’s 2006 book “VoiceMale,” linked a wife’s satisfaction with the division of household duties with her husband’s satisfaction with their sex life.
One husband, Mr. Chethik says in an interview, reported that his wife enjoyed flowers or a candlelit dinner out; but “if he wants to be sure of a romantic evening, he goes for the vacuum cleaner.”
Comments 1
MC — October 22, 2009
why is this even a study? why do we even make an issue of this? to me it seems patently obvious that more 'balanced' households where partners communicate and take care of each other and their home have better and more frequent sex. i think this is actually way more of a personal/relationship/communication thing than gender or social roles (though certainly those are involved.) there's infinite other factors though, too -- one example would be that having time to dedicate to one's home/family is indicative of lower stress levels for many people (how many times have i not done laundry because i worked too late, or left dishes because i was exhausted and depressed?) and in general less stress = more sex as well.
if both parties are spending time in the home taking care of the home, they are spending time together and to some extent 'working on their life together' -- which one would hope also correlates with an active sex life. i bet there's a correlation between overworked or absentee (for whatever reason: travel, alcoholism, work, whatever) husbands/wives here too, and that 'housework' isn't actually the determining factor, but rather that investing time in 'preserving' their 'home environment' or shares space is, in general, reflective of the relationships as a whole.
furthermore, i think it's really offensive for the media to posit this as 'MEN DOING HOUSEWORK IS SEXY AND LEADS TO BETTER SEX'. if my boyfriend cleaned things because he expected me to find it sexy, things would be over between us, and mr chethik here in that last quote seems like a douche who thinks that sex is something he needs to persuade out of his wife with various tricks rather than as something he does and shares WITH her.
good couples -- regardless of if they're heterosexual, homosexual (do lesbians who do their dishes have more sex?), just a friendship/roommates, whatever -- are about communication and caring for the things they share together, and a household and a sex life are among the things they share. no surprise that they reflect each other.