Household Chore Battles Spill Into Bedroom
Aug. 20, 2002 -- Every day, mother of four Stacy Murray tackles a giant and exhausting list of the daily chores: feedings, laundry, diapers, dishes, cleaning and baths.
"I have plenty of days when I'm completely stressed out," Murray told Good Morning America.
Her husband often receives emotional phone calls from his wife at work.
"I usually get a phone call saying that you're going to be minus a child when you get home," Chris Murray said. "Then I have to try to talk, you know, calm her down?"
The Murrays' situation is not unusual. In a recent mail-in survey in BabyTalk magazine, 70 percent of moms and 64 percent of dads told the publication that mom is more frazzled than dad. On average, wives tackle 40 hours of housework a week, compared to 16 hours by husbands, the 26,500 mothers and fathers told the magazine.
While those results are not scientific, they are not too far off some recent random surveys. A 1998 ABCNEWS poll found the vast majority of married women, 84 percent, said they do most of the household chores in their family, and most men, 67 percent, agreed. A quarter of married men said they do most of the chores, or at least share in them equally. Only one in 10 women saw it that way. A 1999 CBS poll found 70 percent of Americans think that women do more.
Problems can definitely arise when mom does a lot more chores than dad. According to a recent study at Brown University, overworked mothers whose husbands are sluggish about housework are much more likely to feel resentful, anxious and depressed than women whose husbands do their fair share.
Ice Queen in Bedroom
When her husband shirks household duties, she takes withholding measures of her own, Stacy Murray says.
"Either I won't talk to him or you know he'll say something that'll just set me off and I'll just yell at him for a while and let him know that I'm not approving of him not helping," she said. Stacy admits that the chore disputes carry over to the bedroom, where she can be quite icy.
"I will hold out on him," she said.
In fairness, while his wife is busy at home, Chris Murray has plenty on his plate, too. He works as a Pepsi merchandiser, and the last thing on his mind is chores.
"I have to go out and earn a living, and so I want to come home and relax for a little while," he said.
But his wife contends that even simple tasks like picking up after himself create extra work for her, and she resents it.
"It bothers me that he doesn't take care of his own things — that he can't put a dish away or he can't pick his clothes up off the floor or things like that," Stacy Murray said.
Picky About Laundry?
Chris does cook dinner, but says Stacy doesn't like the way he helps out when he delves into other chores.
"Times when I have done the laundry and I've folded the clothes, I've gotten spoken to about how I folded them," Chris Murray said.
But this statement drew a quick rebuke from his wife.
"I've never spoken to you, I've never … " Stacy Murray said. Her husband interrupted.
"So I said 'if you don't like the way I fold the clothes, then you go ahead and fold the clothes,'" Chris Murray said.
Changing the Division of Labor
If you are at an impasse over house chores, here are some suggestions from experts and couples who have come up with ways to make the division of labor more equitable.
Ask For Help: Fearing rejection, some wives simply don't ask their husbands to help out with the chores. Though in some cases it might cause friction at first, men are often more willing to do their share than their wives give them credit for.
Changing Places: Try trading off by having dad do the dishes, while mom mows the yard or shovels snow. Traditional gender roles need not apply.
Create a Sanctuary: If one of you is neat, and the other is sloppy, create different areas in your home that allow each of you to be as neat, or sloppy as you like. One of you can retreat to a tidy room, while the other can revel in the messiness of a different room, or area. You cannot put stuff in each other's area, or add anything either.