Why Do We Both Think We Do All the Housework?

Two partners can both honestly feel they do their fair share at home and still keep quarrelling about it. Some of the work is hard to see, especially the thinking that goes on before anyone starts doing anything. A new Australian study has looked at these different views of household responsibilities and how they relate to a couple's happiness together.

Where dinner really begins

Take getting dinner on the table on a weekday.

Someone opens the fridge and notices there isn't much there. Or perhaps there's plenty, but nothing that goes together, and whatever gets made has to suit the person who won't eat this and the person who doesn't like that, without taking longer than the evening allows.

Then there's deciding what to cook, checking what's missing and making a shopping list. Perhaps the other partner buys everything on the way home, which is helpful, although the person who wrote the list may still be remembering what needs using up tomorrow.

The food has to be cooked, the table cleared and the dishes washed. During dinner, someone notices that a child is unusually quiet and tries to find out what's wrong, while also keeping an eye on whether everyone has enough to eat.

Now, if someone asked who made dinner, where would you begin?

The three kinds of household load

Researchers divide household work into three kinds of load. The physical load includes cooking, cleaning and washing. The cognitive load is the thinking, remembering and organising, such as planning the shopping. The emotional load includes anticipating needs, caring and comforting, like noticing that someone at the table needs a little more attention.

Together, these are called the “tri-load”. The more familiar term “mental load” was coined more than four decades ago by the French sociologist Monique Haicault to describe the double burden on women managing careers and household responsibilities.

What 235 couples reported

Sarah Coundouris and Julie Henry, researchers at the University of Queensland in Australia, asked both partners in 235 heterosexual couples living together about these responsibilities. The couples had been together for about 17 years on average, so there had been plenty of time for arrangements to become familiar.

Their research appeared in Scientific Reports, a peer-reviewed journal from the Nature publishing group. It measured perceptions at one point in time, showing links rather than what caused what. You can read the original study here.

Women reported doing more across all three loads, with the largest difference in thinking, planning and scheduling. They reported taking on almost 25 per cent more of this work than their partners reported.

And the further apart partners were in how they saw the division of work, the poorer their relationship quality. Disagreement about physical and emotional work was linked to unhappiness most strongly for women, while disagreement about the planning work was linked to poorer relationship quality only for men.

When both accounts feel true

Think back to dinner. One partner remembers shopping and cooking, quite reasonably counting both as substantial jobs. The other remembers deciding what to eat, writing the list, remembering tomorrow and trying to find out why the child was upset, and wonders how all that disappeared from the account.

Around the Established Adult years, from 37 to 42, work, children and a household can keep both people so occupied that even explaining what they've done feels like another job. After years together, surely the other person ought to know by now?

Perhaps that's where the argument gets stuck, with each waiting for recognition of work the other hasn't fully seen.

Sources

• Coundouris & Henry, Scientific Reports (University of Queensland)
• WAtoday (Australian news website), report on the tri-load study