I really do hope that what you are about to read does not come as a shock – because it’s pretty obvious. But apparently, married women do more housework because of one unfortunate reason: Their husbands. This is according to a new study from the University of Michigan which shows that men create an extra seven hours of housework a week yet a wife saves her husband only an hour of housework a week. Huh?

Frank Stafford, of the university’s Institute for Social Research (ISR) explains:

It’s a well-known pattern. There’s still a significant reallocation of labor that occurs at marriage -men tend to work more outside the home, while women take on more of the household labor.

And the situation gets worse for women when they have children.

Apparently the researchers studied people’s diaries to assess how people spent their time. They then questioned men and women about how much time they spend cooking, cleaning and doing basic work around the house. Here’s what they found:

They found that young single women did the least amount of housework, at about 12 hours a week. Married women in their 60 and 70s did nearly twice that amount, while women with more than three children spent 28 hours a week cleaning, cooking and washing.

No worries though: In 1976 women did an average of 26 hours of housework a week, while men did about six, according to the study.

But there’s a way you can combat this: From a young age, my mom made her three children (us) do as much of the chores as possible, increasing our responsibility over them the older we got. Now, she has it so waxed she only gets to do the fun stuff. Like hack away at trees and leave the mess for us. Clever, ne?

[source: ewn]