Men's dirty secret: We're lazy

emily flake

I was walking through the neighbourhood last week on a particularly windy fall day when it occurred to me that I am a stereotype.

I was watching leaves flutter down onto front yards, and while considering that someone was going to have to rake and dispose of them was feeling pleased that it wasn't going to be me.

Then I remembered that when it came to the lawn I shared with the woman I lived with for many years, I always held the same blasé attitude. And the truth is, although I did do work around the house, it was never without her “suggesting" four or five times that I help out.

Thinking back on it, I was forced to conclude this unpleasant fact: I had been a lazy husband.

I can partly blame The Maria Shriver Report for having such thoughts on my mind. The document, released a few weeks ago, culls decades of research to assess the changing role of the sexes in work and home life.

In a chapter called Sharing the Load, devoted to the breakdown of household chores between men and women, the conclusion was optimistic: “Twenty-nine per cent of wives reported in 1980 that their husbands did no housework at all. Twenty years later, this had fallen to 16 per cent," the report stated.



It's good news, I suppose, though highlighting decreasing non-involvement gives new meaning to setting the bar low.

Now, it was never true that I did nothing. But the management of housework –the nagging – fell solely on my ex's shoulders. Endeavouring to mend my lazy ways in the future, I contacted Joshua Coleman, co-chair of the Council on Contemporary Families and author of The Lazy Husband: How to Get Men to Do More Parenting and Housework .

It turns out that part of what made me shirk housework hits the lazy-husband stereotype right on the head: I thought every spare hour I could get a hold of should be devoted to my career. This isn't unusual for working women, either, but Dr. Coleman points out that the housework still has to be done by someone; and as a man, there were no “identity costs" for me if it didn't get done.

“If a woman's best friend is coming over – or even if it's the husband's best friend – and the house is a mess, on average more women than men will feel compelled to clean before the person arrives," Dr. Coleman says. “Societally, we're still much more likely to blame a woman for a dirty house."

Dr. Coleman says this reluctance-at-large to equal out division-of-labour expectations can hit men in a pretty sensitive spot: their sex lives.

“There's some research I've got that shows that in those homes where men do more housework, it's associated with women who are more interested in having sex with them," Dr. Coleman said from the glass-half-full angle.

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