Household Division of Labor; Millennial Edition
Our last post centered around the impact that COVID is having on family dynamics both in the home and at the workplace. My goal with this post is to bring us back to why it matters for the modern parent, and share a few motivations to help you and your partner.
Why are these numbers so important?
You may have seen the statistic that women handle up to 75% of unpaid or invisible labor. This feels like a vague number. Let’s break it down.
A vast majority of this unpaid work falls into the category of care; this can be for children, for elder family members, etc. To put a number behind this, it’s estimated that unpaid childcare alone in the US in 2012 had a value of $3.2 trillion dollars (via Caroline Criado Perez’s Invisible Women). That was about 20% of the nation’s GDP for the year.
The remaining work, upon which the remainder of this post will focus, is centered around housework. We’ve talked about how COVID is underscoring the traditional gender norms around housework. However, this unequal split is not news, per se. This article does a great job of visualizing these time splits across the globe.
Let’s put some more numbers on this. In the UK, women spend 249 minutes a day on unpaid work, while men spend 120. Considering the average hourly wage is £14.8, in the UK, that’s £430/week for women and £207/week for men worth of work unaccounted for. Now add in paid work. In total, women are working more hours each week than men.
“But millennial couples are different…”
A fun statement to unpack. This is true on many counts. The gender pay gap is narrowing. Millennials are more likely to see each other as equally intelligent and deserving of a career. It’s all rosy, right?
Not exactly. Women still do the vast majority of housework in both the US and the UK. Here’s something especially interesting: even if a dual income, no children (DINC) couple evenly splits household work currently, when their child arrives, that split goes out the window. According to a study, “women added 22 hours of childcare (physical and engagement) to their work week while doing the same amount of housework and paid work as before. Men added 14 hours of childcare to their work week, but did 5 fewer hours of housework after the baby’s birth.”
Ooph.
Why does this happen?
In classic Mirza style, we love talking about structural barriers that hold families back and keep traditional gender norms in place. So, a brief nod to things like unevenly allotted parental leave, exorbitant costs of childcare that can cause one parent (often the mother) to stay home, rigid workplace hours: we see you.
When it comes to housework, eons of gender roles have designated women as “keepers of the house,” and a dated concept of masculinity comes into play. As writer Tiffany Dufu says, “A well-managed home is still a gendered expectation, which is why it’s so very difficult for men to get home control disease – they just don’t attach it to their value.”
Having a clean house is a social pressure put on women, and thus we see housework as a more feminine task. And according to some recent studies (as cited in The Atlantic), in opposite-sex couples, when the woman makes more money than the man, he actually does LESS housework. When men feel a challenge to their masculinity, they may find ways to reaffirm it. Straying away from feminine tasks, such as cleaning the kitchen or doing laundry, falls into that camp.
Why should my partner and I split household labor?
There are quite a few reasons. One, which we’ve already cited, is that women are working more hours each week. This means that they have a higher mental load and higher stress, which in turn can affect productivity, health, and relationships.
Speaking of relationships, here’s the second reason this matters. One study showed that US couples who split household work have lower divorce rates than those who don’t. Another study showed that couples who more evenly distribute household work actually have sex more frequently. (Should we just stop here?)
Let’s also talk about how this impacts men. Sheryl Sandberg wrote a great article in which she mentions, “fathers who spend more time with their children experience greater satisfaction at work, as well as lowered blood pressure and rates of cardiovascular disease.”
Finally, for our millennial parents trying to break the mold, a fascinating study showed that when fathers shouldered an equal share of housework, their daughters were less likely to limit their aspirations to stereotypically female occupations.
If the theory is great but implementation seems tricky, fear not. We are building out more content and tools to help you and your partner split chores and reap the benefits.
