Divorce and Housework

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My wife has a humorous coaster on the coffee table that says, “Housework became a snap when I realized — Hey, I’m a man!”  A new study is probably going to be the topic of a conversation tonight when she reads this.  Using data from 2007 and 2008, researchers looked at thousands of Norwegian couples to see if they could find any correlations between marriage, housework and happiness.

  • 71% had relationships where the women did all or most of the housework.
  • 4% had relationships where the men did all or most of the housework.
  • 25% of the couples shared housework equally.

They found that divorce rates were significantly higher among the 4% where the men did most of the housework.

However, men before you throw down the dish towel, the researchers concluded this might just mean that modern couples are more likely to divorce than old-fashion couples, and housework has no effect on divorce at all.