Housework

Studies have identified multiple consistent predictors for men's relative share of housework, including employment, ideology, and earnings, and, to a lesser extent, age, marital status, and children. Men share more housework when women are employed more hours, and sometimes when the men themselves are employed fewer hours. When wives earn more income than their husbands, husbands also generally share more housework. Younger and more highly educated women do less housework, while men with more education tend to do more. Women's (and sometimes men's) egalitarian gender attitudes also predict more sharing. Conversely, being married is associated with more housework for women but less for men. Finally, when couples have children, women tend to do substantially more housework, whereas men's housework hours tend to remain about the same or decrease slightly (Coltrane 2000).