More Housework, More Sex?

Yet another one-sided study seeks to emasculate men

By Janice Fiamengo

With apologies to Bettina Arndt, who has written more and better on this topic than I ever could

Over the past decade, studies and related articles have gushed about the connection between male domesticity and a satisfying sex life. The more housework a man does, we are told, the more and better sex he can hope for in his relationship. “Fair division of household chores can help your sex life,” trumpeted the CBC, Canada’s state-sanctioned and funded media outlet.

It’s difficult to believe.

Common sense and other social science research point to the qualities that attract women to men over the long term, including wealth, good looks, traditional masculinity, strength, competence, and a calm temperament, none of which have to do with mop and toilet brush. Personally, I can’t bear to see a man vacuuming.

Even some feminist women have admitted (for example, in this so-condescending essay) that they are primarily attracted to masculine men who take charge and don’t ask for permission. A much-decried 2013 study went so far as to allege that men who do women’s jobs in the home have less sex than other men.

The fact is that sexual desire (as distinct from grudging gratitude or whole-hearted thankfulness) is a subject with so many variables, dependent on the persons involved and the relationship they have made together, that responsible social scientists should refrain from blanket ideologically-loaded pronouncements.

All hail to the house-husband!

That, however, hasn’t stopped them. Recently, researchers have taken to enthusiastically singing the praises of the feminine man who picks up the kids’ toys and scours the bathtub. This man is allegedly keen to take on the domestic burdens that irritate his partner and destroy her libido. Commentators stress the feminist-compliant results.

“Some men may think it is not their job to help with housework,” explains Anna Matteo for a government-funded English-learning magazine, “But a new study shows that these men may want to think again. The study found that a man who helped around the house not only has more sex with his partner; he also has a really good sex life. It is time to face facts. Women find a man washing dishes very sexy.”

Actually, there is no evidence, scientific or otherwise, that women find dish-washing men “very sexy.” The study mentioned by the author posits general correlations only. But on this topic, commentators have felt free to embroider and embellish, usually focusing on the least sexy domestic chores to rhapsodize about their aphrodisiac effects.

Barrett Johnson, writing for a Christian family publication, pursued a similar narrative arc, citing popular psychotherapist John Gottman that the primary need is for the wife to feel “respected and understood.” “Nothing does this more effectively than when a husband serves and helps his wife.”

“It’s not a magic formula,” Johnson admitted, “but you can’t argue with the research. Your cleaning the kitchen, scrubbing a toilet, or making the bed may be the turn on your wife needs.” Notice how Johnson chooses the most emasculating chores possible, emphasizing tasks that require little strength or skill, are typically performed by women, and are often, in fact, of far greater interest to women than to men.

Pleasing the woman is the whole point. As the lead author of one of the frequently-touted studies summed it up, “The evidence shows that when men do a greater share of housework, women’s perceptions of relationship fairness and satisfaction are greater. And when couples are more satisfied with their relationships, they tend to get it on more often.” Here, the reference to “women’s perceptions” slides seamlessly into the statement about “couples” who are satisfied with their relationship. Happy wife, happy life.

Well, perhaps.

Or perhaps it’s the other way around: that when a woman is happy with her man (and with herself), she is far less inclined to dwell on who does what percentage of housework. When she’s unhappy with her man, all the scrubbing in the world will not be good enough.

Unfortunately, in a culture in which women initiate 70% of all divorces, and in which women’s self-reported happiness and satisfaction are the lowest they’ve been in decades (see also here), thanks in no small part, I’ve argued, to feminist theorizing and proselytizing, women’s tendency to feel aggrieved finds ample fuel, with discussion of housework inequity simply adding a source of ire.

Surely even a fully-indoctrinated university researcher doesn’t actually believe that the sight of a man elbows-deep in dish soap is a literal turn-on for most women? No. These are feminist studies and feminist commentary pushing an ideologically acceptable thesis based on findings that are, as we’ll see, far from robust. The primary aim is to lecture, browbeat, and mislead unwary men, and to put dissatisfied women ever more firmly in charge of heterosexual domestic life, with more of the unhappy results we already see around us.

What about the Man’s Libido?

Articles about male household duties tend to adopt a patronizing tone directed at the imagined male reader, who is assumed to need tutoring and finger-wagging. Do your part, men are scolded, and you might get a reward–though of course you are never to expect or demand it.

All will depend on whether your female partner decides you’ve done enough.

None of the academic research or accompanying commentary broaches what women should do to keep their partners satisfied, whether in bed or out of it, and I highly doubt that there is a single researcher at a single western university who is even considering such a study. It would be dubbed sexist and insulting, perhaps even an encouragement to abuse.

As we have so often been told, women don’t owe men anything. For men, of course—in a feminist-compliant academic and cultural environment—it’s a different story.

None of the housework studies addresses male desire, which is simply taken for granted. Do men get a libido boost from scrubbing the roasting pan or changing the bed sheets?

Where male desire might be lacking, it will surely be found to be the man’s fault and his responsibility to repair. No one in academia or the mainstream media suggests that women should cook a special meal or supply a back rub to lessen her husband’s work stress.

Similarly, no one suggests that women should take responsibility for their own desire or lack thereof, or that their perceptions, grievances, victim-mentality, or consumption of feminist propaganda (such as the studies themselves) might have any role to play.

Measuring (or not measuring) gender inequities and female desire

One aggressively feminist study is “Gender Inequities in Household Labor Predict Lower Sexual Desire in Women Partnered with Men.” Originally published, in 2022, in Archives of Sexual Behavior, a peer-reviewed medical journal, it is a long report filled with social-science jargon that alleges an unambiguous finding: if the man doesn’t do his fair share, according to his woman’s assessment, she will not desire him.

Parts of the article’s abstruse phrasing and complex methodological framing are beyond my competence to assess. Yet basic flaws in the thinking are glaringly evident even to a simple humanities academic.

The study, which actually comprised two separate studies, was intended to test whether there is a correlation between female desire and a woman’s sense of relationship equality and fairness as measured by how much she and her male partner contribute to housework and childcare. The results allegedly show that where a woman perceives inequality in her partner’s contribution, her desire decreases. The researchers call this “the heteronormativity theory of low desire in women.”

The findings are tailor-made for our feminist masters. Desire is not an issue of the woman’s body or mind; it is an issue of patriarchal unfairness. Like so much feminist academic work, the whole thing is slanted toward the conclusion sought.

Notably, only the women were asked to report on the contributions of each partner to housework. No men participated in the study as a counter-balance to the women’s self-reporting, and the researchers had no mechanism for assessing the accuracy of the women’s claims, either about their own work or about that of their male partners.

With only each woman’s word for how much housework she and her partner did, there is no reason for confidence in the results.

The study, then, should really be approached as a survey of women’s perceptions and/or claims about domestic equality, not about reality. But the researchers repeatedly speak of women’s “experiences of domestic inequality.”

From the start, then, readers should be skeptical about the conclusion that there is a “negative correlation” between female sexual desire and unequal housework. It is just as likely, or more likely, that a woman who is unhappy or bored with her man, for whatever reason, will misrepresent the amount of work she and her partner do.

Moreover, the study assumes, but never proves, a one-way relationship between the woman’s sense of household fairness and her desire. It’s a satisfying feminist contention, and a useful basis for the exhortations to men to take up their scrubbing brushes.

But it doesn’t equate to reality. In reality, a woman’s desire for her husband—along with, one hopes, the love, affection, pride, and affability that a good long-term partnership should involve—will influence her perception of fairness. Fairness, after all, cannot be calculated by mathematical equation. One hour with a snow shovel is not equal to one hour with the washing machine rumbling. Many women are grateful never to deal with car repairs or kill a bathroom spider, tasks for which hours of dishwashing might seem rightful recompense.

And again, a happy woman does not in general count up hours or care about them, while a woman alert to unfairness is probably already well past desire.

None of this is acknowledged in the researchers’ assessment. The study’s fundamental flaw connects to a host of other problems in how the study claims to measure housework “equality.”

Only women’s work is properly counted

As so often in feminist-minded investigations, the study is constructed so that men’s work is minimized by definition. Paid employment, for example, is completely elided from the calculation.

It turns out that a significant number of women in both studies reported that they work for pay outside the home only part-time or not at all. Their male partners’ hours of paid work are not mentioned.

In Study 1, 180 of 706 female participants (25%) reported that they were not employed at all while 252 of the 706 (36%) said that they were employed part-time. In Study 2, 81 out of 424 female participants (19%) were not employed outside the home at all while 139 of the 424 (33%) claimed to be engaged in part-time paid work.

In sum, over half of the women in each study reported that they were entirely or partially supported by the paid work of their male partners—a fact that does not factor in any way into the researchers’ theorizing.

Clearly, there is something wrong with a study that does not consider paid work a contribution to the household. A woman who is being entirely or partially supported by her partner’s paid work might reasonably be expected to do more than 50% of domestic tasks and childcare, given that her time at home and ability to do the work is far greater than that of her male partner.

Further contributing to the study’s bias is the fact that the household duties counted by participants are heavily slanted towards traditionally-female domestic work, showing little regard for or understanding of what men contribute.

Household tasks for Study 2 were divided into eight categories: Finance; Life and social planning; Cleaning; House and car maintenance; Childcare and development; Meal planning; Parenting logistics; and Household administration. These categories were then subdivided into subsidiary tasks, with Cleaning, Childcare, and Parenting logistics being most extensively broken down.

Many line items are devoted to parsing the varieties of traditionally feminine tasks such childcare, which includes listening to the child/children’s problems; encouraging and praising them; teaching/helping with homework; teaching life skills and monitoring progress; playing with/entertaining them; breaking up fights between children; comforting them; reassuring them when concerned/anxious; listening to/talking to child/children about everyday life.

Space is even allotted to such relatively pleasant and certainly non-essential tasks as organizing celebrations, planning social events, and planning date nights. It’s hard to see these as a legitimate part of “housework.”

Traditional male tasks and duties, on the other hand, are hardly represented at all.

A catch-all category of “House and car maintenance” is used to cover a host of time-consuming and physically-demanding activities such as mowing the lawn, seasonal maintenance, tree/bush trimming, watering, planting, and weeding.

Not mentioned here or anywhere are such forms of work as lawn fertilizing, hauling and unloading of soil or mulch, power washing, gutter cleaning, roof cleaning, roof repair, fence repair, shed maintenance, or cleaning and maintenance of outdoor implements such lawn mowers, leaf blowers, and power tools. Nowhere is mentioned the extremely heavy work of landscaping, hardscaping, tiling, grouting, building of retaining walls, or cutting down of trees or bushes.

True, not every man does all or perhaps even most of these activities—just as very few women do all or even most of the traditionally feminine activities listed—but some men certainly do. Yet they’re not even included in the list of household items that the female study participant is invited to count.

Automobile maintenance and repair are given no line items at all. Obliterated from mind are the extensive range of dirty, physically onerous, and technically demanding jobs that include but are not limited to changing tires, putting in new brake pads, installing a battery, changing the car’s oil, replacing a radiator or water pump, and a myriad of repairs to a car’s engine or body. Many of these tasks, depending on the age and condition of the car, can be demanding, stressful, and full of unexpected complexities and problems that can occupy hours, days, or weeks of a man’s time and energy.

Only a disgruntled feminist intent on finding grievance where none exists could imagine that two hours spent fixing a fuel line is in any manner equivalent to two hours spent planning a child’s birthday party or a couple’s “date night.” Naturally, if one never works on a car, which most women do not, one has no idea what is involved.

I could continue in this manner, but the point should be clear. This is an outrageously biased feminist study designed with a feminist conclusion already in mind, in which heterosexual partnerships are seen as a bad deal for women.

The study was so poorly thought out that it could not even indicate the range of house-related tasks that men and women typically perform because the researchers were unable to list what men do in house and yard. The data gathered, allegedly about women’s grievances and desire, is effectively useless except as yet another gauge of how ceaselessly academics assert female victimhood and seek to destroy heterosexual amity.

Alas, the premise and methods of the study are all too typical in a feminist culture in which many women do not even know what men do in the world—yet alone around the house—and don’t stir themselves to understand or appreciate it.

Many partnerships would be happier if they did. How productive it would be to live in a culture that encouraged women to value men and to make home a happy place through their exertions and cheerfulness. We don’t, in general, live in that kind of culture, though individual women are admirable.

In the meanwhile, men should not be hectored to feminize themselves in a desperate bid to get something that may not be worth getting in the absence of the woman’s free offer of love and desire.

 

First published in the Fiamengo File