How Much Housework Should Men Do?

According to a recent study on housework, married women do more housework than men do. In fact, married women do more housework than they did when they were single. On average, married women do 17 hours of housework each week while married men do 13 hours. A U.S. news article suggests women the women probably are dumped on by men even more than the study shows.

Yet, there is good news in this study. In 1976 for example, a married women did 10 more hours a week of housework than then do now. Men did about six hours less work than they do now. Therefore, while men and women have not divided the housework in half, they have come a long way on making the division of labor even.

Some other points I noticed from the graph on this study are that single women do about 4 hours less housework than they do now. In addition, single men do almost the same amount of housework now as they did in 1976. Maybe they just don't see the dirt.

My question is how much housework do women want their husbands to do? When compared to my father, my husband does a great deal of more housework, while being involved more with our kids and doing more community service.

In 1976, my dad worked, came home, slept, gave us money and went back to work. He cooked breakfast on the weekends and attended a few plays. My mother did all of the laundry, cooked all of the meals, cleaned the rooms including those of the children, and took care of the babies with the help of a teenage daughters.

In 2005, my husband took the kids to evening activities, folded laundry, cleaned the kitchen, cooked breakfast and dinner on the weekends, and spend a great deal of time working in the church. I like to joke that he is a better mom than I am, and in actually he is in many ways.