If you’re a single parent, handling all the housework and childcare responsibilities on your own, you might expect to do more work at home than women with a partner to pick up the slack. Butmarried women actually do more domestic work than their single mom counterparts—provided their partner is a man.
Women married to men spend more time on housework than single moms, according to a new study from sociologists at the University of Maryland, University of Texas, and University of Southern California. Why? The researchers say that married moms are more likely to “perform gender” in their relationships. “Married mothers increase housework in part to meet expectations about home-cooked meals, clean clothes, and well-kept houses—behavior integral to contemporary definitions of appropriate behavior for wives and mothers,” authors Joanna Pepin, Liana C. Sayer, and Lynne M. Casper write.
Adjusted for differences in employment, education, race, and number of children or other extended family members at home,married women spend an average of 2.95 hours daily on housework, compared to 2.41 hours for unmarried women—a difference of about 32 minutes every day. Married mothers report spending 10 minutes less daily on leisure and 13 minutes less daily on sleep—small differences, but ones that add up over a week.The findings hold true whether the married woman works full-time or is a stay-at-home mom, as a married woman’s time becomes a “shared household resource.”
“Marriage remains a gendered institution that ratchets up the demand for housework and childcare through essentialist beliefs that women are naturally focused on home and hearth,” the authors write, concluding that married women are prioritizing housework over leisure time or sleep as they conform to societal expectations around gender.