This is my weekly newspaper column, published yesterday. Also available online at:
http://cumberlink.com/articles/2008/04/11/opinion/columns/rich_lewis/doc47fe1528c8aea948806288.txt(mods: my column, have reprint permissions)
Husbands getting bad press once more
By Rich Lewis, Sentinel Columnist, April 10, 2008
Last updated: Thursday, April 10, 2008 9:28 AM EDT
Every now and then an academic study makes a big splash because somebody in the school’s press office stuck a catchy lead on it.
Then the grabby headline hits the media, gets shot around the world in e-mails, feeds a libelous stereotype and solidifies as legend.
Well, husbands, I am here to rise in our defense against the latest example of this, because we were its victims.
“Having a husband creates an extra seven hours a week of housework for women.”
That was the first line of an April 3 press release (www.ns.umich.edu/htdocs/releases/story.php?id6452) from the University of Michigan.
Newspapers, radio and TV stations, magazines and bloggers translated that into all kinds of cute headlines: “Have a Husband? Add 7 More Hours of Housework”; “‘I do’ Means 7 Hours More Housework for Women”; “What do husbands bring to a marriage? More housework for wives!”; “Working for the man”; “Those lazy husbands: Michigan study proves it” — to cite just a few.
I tremble with indignation.
The study in question was conducted by Michigan’s Institute for Social Research, and I’d like to have seen the whole thing, because the press release about it is a confusing jumble.
But here’s the item that got billboarded: Single women with no kids reported doing about 11 hours of housework a week, but married women with no kids said they do about 18 hours (assuming I read the unhelpfully imprecise charts correctly).
“And the situation gets worse for women when they have children,” said the director of the study, economist Frank Stafford. The release says that “married women with more than three kids... did an average of about 28 hours of housework a week. Married men with more than three kids, by comparison, logged only about 10 hours of housework a week.”
Single men, on the other hand, average about eight hours of housework a week, but only seven once they get married.
Case closed -- husbands guilty of sloth.
Except buried down deep in the press release is this little detail: “Housework” was defined as “time spent cooking, cleaning and doing other basic work around the house. Excluded from these ‘core’ housework hours were tasks like gardening, home repairs, or washing the car (my italics).”
What? We’re getting branded as lazy parasites because the stuff we do doesn’t count!
OK, and I swear this is true, in just the last three days, someone in my household (and I won’t say who), looked at me and said:
“The battery in the clock is dead.”
“The water pressure is way down. The filter needs to be changed.”
“The computer won’t play any videos from Web sites.”
“The lightbulb in the hallway is burned out.”
The message in every case was the same: Fix it.
And I did.
But none of those counted because none involved pushing a vacuum, boiling water or making the bed — all of which I do sometimes (well, except for the bed thing).
And don’t even get me started on the yard. Yes, I do the gardening (doesn’t count) and spend maybe 10 hours a week mowing the lawn (doesn’t count), and when I look up and down the street to see who’s mowing all the other lawns in the neighborhood — husbands, husbands, husbands.
Who says the “house” ends when you walk out the door? You know, you can get fined for not mowing your lawn but not for letting the laundry pile up. That’s a fact.
I’ve never been too handy around cars — but a lot of husbands save their wives a ton of time, hassle and money keeping the family vehicle running. Doesn’t count.
And I’ll throw in another thing. Based on what I’ve seen, a lot of wives are just way too obsessed with doing housework in general. A speck of dirt falls off your shoe or a crumb falls from your cookie — most wives freak out and say, “You have to vacuum that right now!”
Most husbands say, “Let’s wait until there’s enough junk on the rug to justify using the electricity it takes to run the vacuum,” because we understand that energy conservation is more important than fear of a little debris.
And laundry. Why have 20 pairs of socks or 15 shirts if not so you can go a few weeks without washing any of them?
And I never did get the bed-making thing. Or the folding of the towels thing. Or why a cobweb dangling from a 12-foot ceiling is a threat to national security. Or why I can’t use the same coffee cup for a week without washing it. Or why, when we invite guests over, we have to scrub the whole house as though they are coming to have open-heart surgery and need a sterile environment.
And here’s another bit of the study that didn’t make it into that nefarious headline: In 1976, women did an average 26 hours of housework a week; in 2005, they did 17 hours. In 1976, men did six hours; in 2005, they did 13.
So when you send that e-mail around, make the headline read: “Wives goofing off but husbands doing twice as much housework.”
See who howls then.
——
Rich Lewis’ e-mail address is: rlcolumn@comcast.net.