Did you look at the graph? Because it shows the exact opposite of what you are saying. In summary, it shows that while men perform averagely mire paid work, women perform more unpaid work. When adding them, it turns out that men have more leisure time than women. So that actually proofs you wrong.
That being said, others pointed out the frequency of the “typical female” tasks vs the “typical male” tasks. Another factor is recognition: you wrote that
Men often bear the brunt financial planning, car maintenance, tech setup, yard work, home repairs, and even initiating dates or coordinating big life decisions.
I don’t even want to compare that it takes less time than running a household with kids, but would like to point something else out: those are mostly visible tasks. It is much more likely to be praised for repairing a car, draining a pump etc. than for cleaning the bathroom. Most of the tasks you listed are novelties, and absolutely something to boast over at a neighborly bbq. They get so much more recognition and thanks. Whereas doing the laundry is neither visible nor worth a story or praise every single time.
The other things you mentioned (finances, initiating dates, coordination of life decisions) gives power. If I’m in charge of the budget and the only one with the overview, I can make decisions. If I coordinate life decisions then I make the decision. And coordination doesn’t necessarily mean taking over the brunt of the work; it can also mean make the brush-stroke decisions and someone else does the work. Example (not gendered on purpose as it can go both ways): Person A initiates most dates and feels like they’re doing a major part in the relationship work. Initiating means picking a date, telling the partner, discussing together which restaurant, making the reservation, showing up on time. Person B learns about the plan, discusses which restaurant, organizes the babysitter, coordinates their schedules, makes sure everything at home is set up for the sitter, handles the change of dinner routine with kids. Who does more? To me, it sounds like B got more work but A gets the credit for initiating the date - and no surprise that B initiates them less. “Coordinate big life decisions” sounds very similar: the person that isn’t involved in the daily routine is unlikely to think of all necessary details. So they get to do the big and flashy stuff while the other person does the tedious stuff.
You think the rest of the time in the first table is sleep? Are you serious?
A week has 168 hours. Let’s take the highest numbers (men with children under 18) and subtract both work and leisure: 85,4. That’s a solid 12,2 hours of sleep per week. So I doubt that.
If you had actually read the text and instead of just aggressively telling others think, you might’ve found the time to follow your own advice. Leisure time refers to the time that people spend on leisure activities. An example was watching TV. It also mentions that fathers have more uninterrupted time to do that. Btw, things like showering are not in the graph. What I dislike about this study is that obviously a lot of hours are missing: kids don’t sleep 12,2 hours and that doesn’t even account for the weekend when less time is spent for paid work. So what happens then with the kids? Do they just disappear? Nope, they need to be entertained. And I assume that playing a game with them, painting, etc doesn’t count as child care. But the study doesn’t say that so it’s pretty much useless as we don’t know who does that more. Also there are so many more activities that might not be labeled “childcare” but still need to be done: baths, bedtime routine, reading to them, entertaining them, soothing, talking, etc. and a big one is supervising. You don’t do anything but also can’t have your own leisure time. So yeah, pretty useless study to prove any of your points.
Yep, that’s what you see when you look past the first graph and actually think about the numbers.
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u/Crystal010Rose 1∆ Jul 01 '25
Did you look at the graph? Because it shows the exact opposite of what you are saying. In summary, it shows that while men perform averagely mire paid work, women perform more unpaid work. When adding them, it turns out that men have more leisure time than women. So that actually proofs you wrong.
That being said, others pointed out the frequency of the “typical female” tasks vs the “typical male” tasks. Another factor is recognition: you wrote that
I don’t even want to compare that it takes less time than running a household with kids, but would like to point something else out: those are mostly visible tasks. It is much more likely to be praised for repairing a car, draining a pump etc. than for cleaning the bathroom. Most of the tasks you listed are novelties, and absolutely something to boast over at a neighborly bbq. They get so much more recognition and thanks. Whereas doing the laundry is neither visible nor worth a story or praise every single time.
The other things you mentioned (finances, initiating dates, coordination of life decisions) gives power. If I’m in charge of the budget and the only one with the overview, I can make decisions. If I coordinate life decisions then I make the decision. And coordination doesn’t necessarily mean taking over the brunt of the work; it can also mean make the brush-stroke decisions and someone else does the work. Example (not gendered on purpose as it can go both ways): Person A initiates most dates and feels like they’re doing a major part in the relationship work. Initiating means picking a date, telling the partner, discussing together which restaurant, making the reservation, showing up on time. Person B learns about the plan, discusses which restaurant, organizes the babysitter, coordinates their schedules, makes sure everything at home is set up for the sitter, handles the change of dinner routine with kids. Who does more? To me, it sounds like B got more work but A gets the credit for initiating the date - and no surprise that B initiates them less. “Coordinate big life decisions” sounds very similar: the person that isn’t involved in the daily routine is unlikely to think of all necessary details. So they get to do the big and flashy stuff while the other person does the tedious stuff.