The Clever Moke

I recently ran across a somewhat dated article about housework. The key takeaway:

Overall, U.S. women do considerably less housework today than in 1976, while the amount of housework men do has increased. In 1976, women did an average of 26 hours of housework a week, compared with about 17 hours in 2005. Men did about six hours of housework a week in 1976, compared with about 13 hours in 2005.

The good news (for women): Men are doing more. The bad news (for women): men apprently still lag behind.

My wife says it’s good to see that men are catching up to the better half in terms of housework.  Women are sick and tired of carrying all the weight. Sick and tired, I say! Well…she says. I somehow feel a bit of inquity is afoot at home, since I believe myself to be equitable already. So I decided to survey our chorelife. I looked at categories such as: cooking, dishes, dusting, kitchen & bath cleaning, vacuuming, household finance & paperwork, fireplace & firewood care, child care, lawn care, shopping, laundry & ironing, window washing, household maintenance, etc. Guess what? Out of a possible 100 percent, I was performing 54% of the chores.

Not content to find that I was, in fact, a superior household specimen when compared to my significant other, I decided to survey other couples to find out if I was actually The Greatest Man to Ever Live.  
 

I approached some friends and ran through the survey list with them. I chose married women in which both they and their spouses work full-time. First, a caveat: it has been conclusively proven that this exercise in numeric domination will always favor whomever is filling it out.

So here’s the bottom line: I don’t know who does more work, but women are a hell of alot more gracious then men when it comes to allocating points to their spouses. Most of them claimed their husbands did about half the work, and the numbers reflected that. The men I asked (including a spouse of one of my female respondents) generally claimed their wives did significantly less than they did. So…what did I learn?

Men may be doing more, but apparently we aren’t doing nearly enough. (I base this on the fact that I am rarely permitted to just sit around and drink margaritas while my wife installs drywall in the dining room.)

Lastly, a word to the husband of one of my survey respondents. We almost won, but you dropped our mean score from a 50.5% down to a 48.7%. You gotta pick up the slack, brother…maybe do some light vacuuming while she’s moving that old, unused set of barbells to the attic while carrying two screaming five-year-olds and trying to make that cognac and and roasted quail flambé you’ve demanded. Or get in the pool and toss out some of those floating leaves and twigs while she’s dusting, ironing, cleaning the grillwork on the ’67 ‘vette you insisted was essential to eternal bliss and helping the kids with homework.

I am – of course – the exception, and I will continue to shamelessly celebrate it. And everytime I gleefully express my superiority, my wife reminds me that most of her chores (i.e., finances) are time-consuming, whereas mine require less time and emotional/mental exertion (i.e., mowing the lawn). Fine. The record officially reflects that, now.

“Okay, dear. I’m almost done typing, then I’ll get the mower out!”

Uh, I gotta go.