Featured Research

How last night’s fight affects the way couples divide housework

27 June 2018

This article was originally published in April 2018.

Leah Ruppanner, University of Melbourne and Claudia Geist, University of Utah

Housework is traditionally understood as an economic exchange – housework for money – or as a form of patriarchy drawn along gendered lines. Yet our new study argues that housework is also divided according to the previous night’s fight and our knowledge of our partner’s trigger points.

For many couples, the notion that housework is a form of interpersonal tension and support is not surprising – we adjust our behaviours daily as a form of love, caring and compassion for our partners. However, existing theories assume our housework is divided based on four dimensions of our lives: our earnings, our time demands, our gender role attitudes and our gender.

These concepts have been well supported in academic scholarship. Men do less housework, on average, than women; the partner with more resources (more work time and money) spends less time in housework; and couples with more traditional gender attitudes have more traditional work and housework divisions.

Existing theories suggest couples divide housework based on income, time demands, gender, and attitudes to gender roles.
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Time, money and gender are important, but we argue that for modern couples, the interpersonal knowledge developed over the duration of a relationship is increasingly important for the way couples negotiate housework.