Why Complementarian Men Do More Housework

Jan 11, 2021 by

by Joe Carter, The Gospel Coalition:

The Story: A social science study titled “Godly husbands and housework” finds that husbands who attend religious services regularly tend to do more housework than other men do.

The Background: Housework, including child care, is a type of labor that often falls primarily on women. While men have increased their share of housework significantly over the past 50 years, women still provide most of the domestic labor. For example, women in the United States spend two hours more each day cleaning, cooking, taking care of children, and doing other unpaid work than men do, according to a report by Oxfam and the Institute for Women’s Policy Research.

But a study by researchers Bethany Gull and Claudia Geist finds two types of couples that share the workload more equitably. The first is secular couples who share a progressive view of gender equality. The second is couples who are religious (particularly Protestant) and frequently attend worship services.

The researchers found that men who attend religious services sporadically do occasionally report a more traditional division of labor for grocery shopping, meal preparation, and cleaning, and limited evidence that they may do less housework overall (among those who attend services once per month). However, men with high levels of participation in religious services are associated with both equal sharing of the labor and also spending more time on housework.

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