Real men do housework

Rex Features

When David Cameron went to Sweden recently, he did some thinking aloud. He made some remarks allowing Number 10 to hype up the suggestion that the Government was seriously considering Swedish style tax relief for working mothers to use domestic staff. David Cameron said: “What you do in Sweden in terms of tax help and tax relief, not so much on child care but on other things that help women go out to work, I thought that was a very interesting idea that I want to look at further.”

The Swedish government allows people to deduct from their tax bill half the cost of household services such as cleaning, cooking, lawn-mowing and babysitting. If George Osborne does introduce tax relief on domestic cleaning staff in the UK, there is no doubt it will help well off families but it will also further entrench gender inequality among lower earners. The revolution in gender roles is unfinished business. Women still shoulder the overwhelming burden of household tasks, particularly after they have had children. When they earn more, their bargaining power with their partners increases, so closing the gender pay gap would help.

New IPPR analysis, published this week, shows that just one in ten married men (10%) do an equal amount of housework as their wives but that a slightly higher proportion (13%) actually do more housework than their wives.

The latest statistics show the number of ‘house husbands’ in Britain has trebled in the last 15 years, although there are still just 62,000 men who are economically inactive and say they care for family or the home.

But this shows that couples find it easier to split into traditional ‘breadwinner’ and ‘homemaker’ roles than they do to share employment, childcare and housework.

IPPR’s analysis shows how patterns of housework have slowly changed over the last half century. We looked at women born in 1958 and compared them to women born in 1970, when both cohorts of women were in their early thirties. More than eight out of ten women (85 per cent) born in 1958 said they do more ‘laundry and ironing’ than their partner, while just over seven out of ten women (75 per cent) born in 1970 agreed. For the latest cohort of women in their thirties, progress has slipped slightly back, with 77 per cent saying their do more than their husbands.

We were surprised to find that more than eight out of ten married women (87%) still do seven or more hours a week of housework, the equivalent of an entire working day spent on housework. Just 3% of married women are able to do less than three hours of housework each week. It is likely that most of these couples have paid help although there are no official figures for the number of UK homes that employ domestic staff.

Households from higher socio-economic groups are more likely to have ‘laundry and ironing’ done by hired help. But the proportion has declined over time, with 6 per cent of professional and managerial women who were born in 1958 saying someone else does the laundry and ironing (when they were 33 years old), compared with 3.6 per cent of professional and managerial women born in 1970 (when they were 30 years old).

The biggest advances have been made by women who do not have dependent children in their home. Just over one in five women (22 per cent) born in 1958, but without children, say their partner shares laundry and ironing equally. Almost a third of women (30 per cent) without children born in 1970 agreed. Academic evidence suggesting that dual earner couples without children are the most gender equal.

Academic evidence using time-use survey data, shows that men in dual earner couples with higher levels of educational attainment now contribute substantially more to childcare than men with lower educational attainment. This change has occurred since the 1970s. But for other household work – excluding childcare – the same change has not occurred. Instead, there has been a ‘catching up’ among men with lower levels of educational attainment since the 1970s but they only equal the contribution of college-educated men. Overall, parents appear to be including their children in their own leisure time.

Academic evidence from Denmark shows men are the unequal party, if you take into account average working day, housework and leisure activity. Other evidence shows that national universal childcare policy increases women’s participation in the labour market and that welfare regimes play an important role in gender equality.

The route to modern feminist goals must pass through fathers. Universal childcare, rather than tax relief for nannies or cleaners is the best way forward for a family friendly, more equal Britain. Men should work more flexibly, take greater responsibility for caring for their children and their homes, and have the right to reserved parental leave.

The state should offer universal pre-school childcare, which will pay for itself over time by increasing the UK’s female employment rate and boosting tax paid by working mothers. The route to gender equality requires society to change and for men to voluntarily do more of their fair share. In 21st century Britain, real men do housework.

Richard Darlington is Head of News at IPPR
Follow him on Twitter @RDarlo

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• crookwatcher

   Wow you are wrong to generalize – I support the household financially and do the housework! Guys who can do housework are absolute hero’s ! Mind you I’m thinking of just going it alone! I’d certainly have less work inside and out.

• crookwatcher

  Are you a woman then? I tell you “Martin” I love guys – but pick the wrong kind that I have to support – pretty but lazy men. I’d give anything for a Thierry Henry who can iron and change the beds without me prompting. You misunderstand women and are single? maybe lucky not to get lumbered?

• Carabosse

   Martin hates women. Don’t feed the troll
  x

• http://www.facebook.com/people/Ron-Plantagenet/100003315418137 Ron Plantagenet

  There is no objective definition of ‘housework’, so what the woman takes 7 hours to do, the man might do in 3. Not because he works faster at the task, but because it’s just not the same task. If the woman defines the parameters of the home, then equality becomes a question of pleasing her by living up to her standards, even if they’re borderline OCD. Can men get credit for having built the house where the ‘housework’ takes place?

• Farweasel

  There’s some really muddled thinking embedded in this article, at least inferentially.

  ‘Women do most of the house work especially after they’ve had kids’ bleats the author.  So far so empirically valid.

  But missing a few other relevant correlations:

  After having kids many, not all, but many, women choose to work fewer hours so they are with said kids.  And being with the kids means they’re at home when their partner is out at work. 

  In the far less frequent model where the man opts to look after the kids whilst his partner goes out and brings in the money the same pattern appears. 

  And who does the housework? – The person with most time at home. 
  The strongest correlation is with time in the house, not gender.

  Argue if you want that women *should* have better access to work and I won’t quarrel …
  ….  But don’t get so fired up about it you make them feel its an obligation – Many women WANT time with their kids and overall the evidence indicates that’s usually good for the kids too.

  Making work their new obligation is just as draconian as saying a ‘woman’s place is in the home’.

  A woman’s place is where she wants to be, not where everyone’s telling her she should be.

• Pacificweather

  Well actually…… people work this out for themselves. There is no social science in this. She earns more money, he looks after the kids. He earns more money she looks after the kids. Do you really have a problem understanding this?

  I always wanted to be a house husband but family economics prevented it.