We’ve noticed that a lot of marriages take a very traditional approach where all the work HE does is money-earning, and all the work SHE does in unpaid – and usually unacknowledged.

So we ask, is this a good thing, or is it a problem?

What happens for those wives who take on more and more, and might even do all the housework AND are employed full time?

How does that work?

If you are a wife that is struggling because you are overloaded with employment and housework – or a husband in the same situation – what is reasonable? What should your expectations be? How can you work together to create a fair housework division in marriage?

First: some personal insight into how this plays out in our own marriage:

For most of our marriage, Caleb has worked in the labour market and I’ve worked at keeping the home. We both like that best, although we have had periods of both of us working too.

During this time, Caleb let me do the dishes and would pitch in the odd time when things were really bad or he felt guilty, or whatever. He realized recently, that he carried an unspoken belief that dishes were part of my job description, not his.

Then he saw an uncle with a similar marriage to ours (she stayed at home, he worked outside the home) that had no concept of the dishes being on her job list and not his. After each meal, he just pitched in… and, so did she… and, so did all of their children. They had some great family mojo going on, and were all together in the kitchen after supper.

This got Caleb reflecting on his own values, and at the end of the day he realized he was just being prideful – like dishes weren’t worth his time and he had more valuable things to do. He also realized it was a power imbalance; that there wasn’t anything intrinsically special or valuable about him over me that means I should do lesser work than he.

The Bible talks about the husband nourishing and cherishing his wife, and about sacrificing himself for her benefit so that she feels loved.[i] He realized he needed to change how he thought about our dishes.

Now, most of the time, we do dishes together! What is really neat is our kids join us and we all do this together without us having to beg or bribe them, turning a chore into some great family time. What’s more, if Caleb or I have something on in the evening, we don’t mind the other not helping with dishes that night. It has given us more freedom and less of a martyr attitude.

So that’s how this has played out in our lives, but what does the research say?

In all industrialized countries, the division of household labour remains unbalanced and gender-dependent. Women are still left with the major responsibility for housework and childcare, and wives perform two to three times more family work than their husbands do.[ii]

Here’s what happens that influences perceptions of fairness.

Spouses who have employment reduce their participation in housework. (No surprises there)

Most marriages assume that the spouse who creates less (or no) household income should assume a larger share of household work.

Traditional women are socialized to accept an unbalanced division of household labour and are cool with this. They believe it’s legitimate.

About 45% of women in this worldwide study believed the distribution of household labour was fair.

The most influential factor on whether you think the share of housework you do is fair or not is gender ideology (#3 above). Your belief about what is fair is most significant. Which is why in marriage it’s really important to figure how/if these beliefs align, and if not, how you’re going to reconcile them.[iii]

Couple more points. If a wife held a full-time job (and low time availability) she felt more injustice if she still did the majority of the housework.

If a wife was contributing income equal to, or greater than, her husband, she felt more injustice if she still did the majority of the housework.