Again the Labor Department is telling us that women spend more time doing housework than men do. And again the story is being misreported so women can roll up newspapers and swat men over the head.
Major media outlets jumped all over this as some kind of male shortcoming. Well, let me be the first to report that men simply are more efficient at housework and thus get it done faster.
The figures from the Time Use Survey show that employed women spend about an hour more a day doing housework than employed men do. But then, among employed people, men work about an hour more a day at their jobs than women do. Even among people with full-time jobs, men still put in about 8.3 hours a day at the office to women’s 7.7 hours.
All in all, it’s pretty much a wash–which, of course, would be done by women.
But the real issue here is that the Labor Department never bothers to look at the quality of the housework being done.
I would venture to say that men actually spend half the time on housework that is being reported by the Labor Department. The rest of the time is spent redoing the housework they just did, as ordered by wives or live-in partners.
That’s because women have some sort of sixth sense–or dirt delusion–that bears no relationship to actual dust, smudges or bacteria.
For example, a guy will spend 10 minutes mopping the kitchen floor to completion, then race over to flip on the TV, which, by the way, he supposedly watches more than she does, according to the same flawed report.
Emotionally, he will have “moved on.” Then in walks the wife/life partner, who asks, “So when are you going to mop the floor?”
He will explain that he has moved on, and she will explain that no he hasn’t.
In actuality, by health department standards everywhere, the floor is perfectly clean, but because in her mind it is not clean, then the floor isn’t really clean, now is it?
If a floor is mopped in the wilderness but she doesn’t see it, is the floor really mopped? Why, no!
So he will spend 10 more minutes mopping, and God knows what she’s doing, probably writing down more time in her housekeeping ledger under “housework supervision,” which the Labor Department will consider housework, so no wonder women are listed as doing more of it.
These, by the way, are the same women who pay hairdressers to cut their hair unevenly, then tossle it; buy grossly faded jeans with holes already in them; and purchase pre-wrinkled shirts–then claim that men are the untidy ones.
Or they’ll buy distressed furniture made to look old and beat up, but heavens, if a guy were to put a beer on that distressed table without a coaster, well, that’s not the right kind of distressing. In days of old, antique men were allowed only to nick furniture with axes and knives, but their wives hit them with brooms if they tried to put a cold one on naked wood.
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Too, women spend countless hours doing “empty” housework. That is, it’s housework that doesn’t really need to be done. Making beds, for example.
Why do we put doors on bedrooms? Certainly there’s no reason other than to hide unmade beds.
Right? OK, may there’s one other reason.
Hey, wait a minute! That didn’t show up on the Time Use Survey. It figures. Men can do that faster too.
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