CHORES AND THE GENDER GAP

Posted by: Cathy Arnst on December 18

A new study finds that we parents are guilty of perpetuating one of the most sexist stereotypes out there (at least I think so): we expect our daughters to do more housework than our sons, and when the boys do lend a hand, we are more likely to pay them for their effort than we are the girls.

Groan. Seem’s we’re setting our daughters up for a lifetime of resentful drudgery and our sons with a sense of entitlement, guaranteeing that household battles between men and women will carry over into the next generation.

I learned about this chore gap from the Wall St. Journal’s always-interesting Work and Family column . The nationwide survey, by the University of Maryland’s Institute for Social Research, gathered data on 3,000 children age 10 to 18. The researchers found that boys spend an average 30% less time doing chores than girls, but are 10 to 15 percentage points more likely than girls to receive an allowance for whatever chores they do bother to do (the survey only looks at aggregate numbers, and not how siblings are treated in an individual family).

This division of labor is reflected by the parents, of course. Women spend about 19.4 hours a week on housework, compared to a mere 9.7 hours for men—even though some 78% of women with children work outside the home.

The U-Mich economist who headed the study speculates that boys may be doing more of the kind of chores that are likely to be financially rewarded, such as lawnmowing, while girls may be relegated to kitchen work such as dishwashing that is regarded as routine and therefore free.

You may think you have a far larger problem than this study addresses, i.e., getting your kids to do any chores at all. But if these findings ring true for your household, please, for the future happiness of your daughters, and self-sufficiency of your sons—get that boy into the kitchen!

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