Homemakers, You’re Not In It For Your Health
Sick of housework? It may not be your imagination. Evidence is mounting that women who toil full time at home are less healthy than those who work elsewhere, say two Ohio State University sociologists.
Catherine Ross and John Mirowsky studied the health of a national sample of 1,497 randomly selected women and found that housewives’ health deteriorated slightly but perceptibly during a single year, while the health of women who worked full time outside the home did not.
“Obviously it is better to be employed in a safe workplace than in a risky one. But our results indicate much greater risks to women’s health from homemaking than from the average full-time job,” Ross and Mirowsky wrote in the latest Journal of Health and Social Behavior.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that vacuuming, washing dishes and picking up after careless kids or slobbish husbands are inherently unhealthful tasks. Rather, housewives may be more inclined to smoke and less inclined to exercise than employed women, he said.
Another theory suggests that housework drives you crazy, and that makes you sick. “Housewives are under more stress than other women and have less control over their own lives,” Mirowsky said. “For many but not all women, being a housewife seems to be very isolating and alienating, and this has a deleterious effect on their health.” Social scientists have strongly suspected work affects health. Employed people are healthier as a group than nonworkers, and not merely because the sickly and lame are less likely to get and hold jobs. Conversely, people who have been fired or laid off seem more susceptible to illness or injury than they were when they were employed.
In fact, housework actually may be as unhealthy for women (and presumably for men) as being dismissed from a job. “For women, homemaking undermines health at least as much as being fired, laid off or being unable to find a job - and it is 13 times more common,” they wrote.
Affirmative action poorly understood
More than four in 10 Americans, including a majority of blacks and Hispanics, incorrectly believe white males are covered under federal affirmative action laws. The national survey by The Washington Post and others (see fact box) also found that a majority of Americans believe that white men should be covered in the future by federal affirmative action laws, which currently define women and minorities as “protected classes.”
Fighting is for losers
Ice hockey has always impressed the Unconventional Wiz as a barroom brawl on ice. Thus, it’s comforting to learn that crime doesn’t pay - even in the hockey rink, where being overly ruthless and overly toothless are viewed as marks of success.
Researcher George Englehardt analyzed game summaries from 4,240 National Hockey League contests between 1987 and 1990 and compared the number of fighting penalties a team accumulated to its finish in the standings. Despite the hockey myth that bad boys finish first, he found just the opposite: Crummy teams were whistled for far more fighting penalties than winning clubs. xxxx AFFIRMATIVE ACTION FOR WHITE MALES? Results of a recent survey show many Americans are unaware of the facts of affirmative action in its present form: Q: Do you think white men are generally covered or not under federal affirmative action laws? Covered 44% Not covered 47% Don’t know 9% Percentage who say white men are covered: Whites 41% Blacks 62% Asians 41% Hispanics 57% Source: Washington Post/Kaiser Foundation/Harvard University survey of 1,970 randomly selected adults, including 802 whites, 474 blacks, 252 Hispanics and 352 Asian-Americans.