Splitting domestic duties

To piggyback on Cindy’s last post about the recent study on how husbands make more work for their wives, here’s a New York Times article that discusses how some parents try to divide the responsibilities 50-50.

In “When Mom and Dad Share It All,” reporter Lisa Belkin writes how some couples aspire to be “parenting partners” by working equal hours, spending equal time with their children and taking equal responsibility for their home.

It’s a pretty lengthy article (I started reading it two weeks ago and finally found the time to finish it this week), but it uses some recent figures from the University of Wisconsin’s National Survey of Families and Households . (Housework, by the way, is defined as things like cooking, cleaning, yardwork and home repairs.)

Here’s how the article summarizes that study:
- The average wife does 31 hours of housework a week while the average husband does 13 (the ratio is slightly more than two to one).
- In households where the wives stay home and husbands are the sole earners, women do 38 hours of housework while men do 12 (a ratio of more than three to one).
- But when husband and wife both have full-time paying jobs, the wife does 28 hours of housework and the husband does 16 (a ratio of slightly less than two to one).
- When the housework ratio is two to one, the wife-to-husband ratio for child care is close to five to one.
- In a family where the mom stays home and dad goes to work, she spends 15 hours caring for kids while he spends 2.
- When both work outside the home, mom’s average goes down to 11 while dad’s goes up to 3.

You get the idea.

One interesting point came at the end. According to several researchers, gay couples find the most balance.

“Heterosexual couples can learn from gay couples about sharing housework and child care,” says Esther D. Rothblum, a professor in the women’s studies department of San Diego State University who completed a comparative study of the relationships of 342 couples — lesbian, gay and heterosexual. “They are good role models.”

What’s the division of labor like at your house? Which chores do you prefer to do? Which tasks do you leave to your partner or the kids?