For some men, these are scary times. Men lost jobs in the recession, and women outnumber them on college campuses. (Some are predicting, in fact, that we’re witnessing the end of men.)
As I’ve written, one way some men are responding to their slipping place in the social hierarchy is by supporting Donald Trump, whose rhetoric hearkens to a less progressive, more traditional time.
But another way men react to having their masculinity threatened is stealthier. They do fewer chores, according to an analysis by Dan Cassino, a professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University, and his wife Yasemin Besen-Cassino, from Montclair State University, which relied on the American Time Use Study. According to their findings, men especially avoid housework just when you’d think they would pick up the slack: When they make less than their wives do.
Overall in the U.S., women clean more than men do. American men did an average of 15 minutes of housework each day, while women did 45, the Cassinos write. Most men—77 percent—did no housework on any given day, while most women—55 percent—did at least some.
This is, it’s worth noting, an American rather than global norm. American women tend to do more housework than women in other countries—about four and a half hours each week, on average. “Meanwhile, Spanish women only spend about an hour and a half a week on housework, Brazilian women spend only 1.6 hours a week,” they write. But “French women spend almost no time on housework at all. French men, on the other hand, spend 1.2 hours a week on housework, well more than the .8 hours a week spent by American men.” (Ladies, your secret, s'il vous plaît!) Also, “Japanese and Slovenian men do the most housework, at 1.3 and 1.4 hours a week.”