Red Shoulder Hawk

Red Shoulder Hawk

Sunday, September 04, 2005

Cleaning up gender disparity

Each week, men spend an average of 11.3 hours on house cleaning. I assume this include outdoor tasks, as well. Women spend an average of 11.6 hours. When asked if the results are sufficient, men say yes, and women say no. When asked if everyone is contributing equally, men say yes, and women say no.

Ladies, you are spending less than 3% more time than the gentlemen. And you're unhappy with the equity of the arrangement, as well as whether the house is clean enough? Puh-lease.

Gentlemen, your partners (on average) aren't spending any more time than you are, but your homes aren't clean enough to suit them. My guess is that there are one or two things that drive her nuts. If you made sure these never happened, she'd feel like the house was cleaner.

In my house, I found out that my habit of picking things up off the floor (where I hate to see the crap) and putting them up on top of the nearest tall thing (the refrigerator, a bookshelf, the TV) drives my wife crazy. In her view, I've taken the mess and put it up near eye-level, instead of cleaning it up. It had been out-of-sight (and therefore at least tidy). Now that I've put it up high, our crap is on display!

I'm sure she wonders why our crap is worthy of being displayed. Or maybe she just wonders why I don't spend enough time cleaning. Maybe with that extra 20 minutes she works each week, she gets nagging rights.

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