Two years of research (i.e. spit tests) on 30 modern working couples and this is the kind of skewed gender-based science we get:
Household chores often get in the way when dual-earner couples want to unwind after a stress-filled day on the job. Now, a new study shows that while wives’ stress levels drop when their husbands are helping them with chores, for men it’s the opposite: stress levels fall when their wives are busy while they’re relaxing.
The study acknowledges that, for both sexes, doing housework kept stress levels higher at the end of the day. But it doesn’t address how women’s stress levels react to leisure time while their partners clean/take care of kids, so I guess we’re to assume that it never happens—or that being an idle woman is the most stressful state of all.
Which is weird. Anecdotally, I feel most relaxed when my boyfriend is cleaning and occasionally fetching me small presents—a cold beer, olives, individually wrapped slices of American cheese—as I lounge on the couch, and I’m sure he’d be pretty pleased if I got off my ass to help him, but I guess we’d both need spit tests to tell for sure.
Curtsies to Nancy for the tip.
Clearly you’re a failure as a woman, Cienna.
I get very stressed when my wife is cleaning and I’m not. She can happily nap through the sound of me vacuuming. I think this is in large part due to her believing I don’t usually do my share.
I’d fucking relax if someone else was doing my housework for me, too. *headdesk*
I get stressed when my husband cleans – I feel like it means I’m supposed to be cleaning right now too. Not rational, not functional, but I’ll ‘fess up to feeling that way.
I’ll also admit that I first read the headline as “Men More Relaxed When Wives are Cheating” – which led me to think the article would be more interesting than it turned out to be.
“Go fix me a turkey pot pie!”
Man, I hate it when anyone else – man or woman – is doing chores and I’m idle. It makes me feel antsy and guilty.
Then again, I have long accepted my status as a mere anecdote.
Individually wrapped slices of American “cheese” are the work of the devil and anyone who eats them is a subhuman monster.
I’m with @[∀n∈ℕ s.t. n%2==0]. My wife cleaning while I sit around makes me feel like I’m not doing my fair share. Out of the four possible combinations, my preferred is just neither of us cleaning.
Tl,dr version of the results: men are happiest when men are relaxing. Women are happiest when NO ONE IS RELAXING.
In my experience, more women fall into the category indicated by Erica @4, re: they tend to feel guilty when not being busy/productive, particularly when others around them ARE being busy/productive. I believe there are numerous studies that back up the notion, snide as you intend it, that “being an idle woman is the most stressful state of all” (though perhaps those studies are also “gender-based,” whatever that means), or at least, that women have a tendency to emphasize productivity over idleness, sometimes to a fault.
Anyway, I’m not sure what you’re getting your panties in a bunch over…the study is essentially saying that men are better at being callous, lazy assholes. Guys are the ones who should be objecting to this, no?
By the comments so far, it’s pretty clear that SLOG commenters are a couple standard deviations away from the rest of the country when it comes to beliefs about gender roles.
Not that that’s a bad or good thing… just an observation.
I am consumed with guilt when my husband cleans and I’m sitting on my ass. But instead of getting OFF my ass and helping him, I usually try to get him to put down the broom and come sit on his ass next to me. And I wonder why my house is a wreck.
I often find my stress levels lower when I am relaxing regardless of house working being done or not.
It stresses me to no end when my husband does housework.
That’s what the “help” is for.
Well, that, and my “general amusement”…
“Scrub little Dutch boy, scrub!”
Thanks for printing this – I was tearing my hair out when I first read it. That this article is serious (I mean really!) shows how strong male privilege is in our culture. Of course men can relax when a woman cleans the house – She’s home, taking care of him, and all is right with the world, right?
Excuse me while I get a life!
It would appear that the lower levels of stress identified in men while their wives are cleaning and they’re not comes from the “entitlement” gland, found at the back of the cerebral cortex.
Hmm….it appears that you either didn’t look at the full article or don’t care. It said that cortisol levels fell in men when women were doing the housework, but rose in women when men are doing the housework. Instead of asking, “Why could that be?”, with a possible answer being that in our society women are conditioned to do housework and so may be stressed when men do it, you’ve decided to dismiss the whole study, that was done scientifically and not journalistically, wholesale because it doesn’t agree with your position.
@10 Too callous and lazy to object…
We’re told that “women’s work” is precisely that–and that men just can’t do it right. Funny, because that’s how I see my husband.
A mystery? No way. This is the stuff that’s going to go down the toilet of history. Why can’t my husband do proper household chores? Not that he doesn’t want to, because he does–really poorly. But because his family spoiled him and NO ONE in that family EVER taught him or encouraged him to perform ANY “womanly arts.”
When I got ahold of him, I immediately began to teach him how to cook, and he does so, enthusiastically, every day. He even bakes from scratch. As far as proper dish-washing, well, we’ll have a dishwasher one day, and I won’t have to go through the humiliating steps it takes to teach the finer art of grease and food-bit removal. The guy just can’t get it.
But it’s so worth it. There are good reasons people choose not to have children. I am a lazy bitch with OCD, and kids would probably destroy me.
If you breeders out there would just stop the cycle of idiocy and ignore gender assignments of chores that simply have no business being gender-assigned, they’ll end up in happier relationships. Two less-stressed spouses are simply better than one whose happy and one whose miserable.
@4 EricaP
Ha! I did the same thing about reading it “cheating.” If she were out cheating that would totally calm me down.
Speaking as a house husband, I love being home alone scrubbing the floors on my knees with rags, wearing nothing but my collar. But ya know, that’s kinda my thing…Not for men in general.
@3 BEG
I’d totally clean your house for you. Maybe she’d lend me out. Doubtful. *sigh*