Jan 16, 2010
There's nothing quite like pulling on the rubber gloves, splashing
each other with dirty dish-water and then reaching for the vacuum
cleaner with the adjustable nozzle to get you in mood for love.
The first Correlation of the Week for 2010 is awarded to Constance
Gager, from Montclair State University, and Scott Yabiku, from
Arizona State University, who discovered that wives and husbands
who spend more hours in housework and paid work report more
frequent sex. They theorise that women and men who "work hard" also
"play hard."
The report, "Who Has the Time? The Relationship Between Household
Labor Time and Sexual Frequency," published in the Journal of
Family Issues, documented a survey of 6,877 married couples which
showed that couples who devote lots of time to work and chores
still make time for sex. The results contradict the idea that time
spent on household chores reduces the opportunity for sex - worth
remembering next time this particular excuse is used...
The authors controlled the results for "gender ideology" - that is,
they controlled for the various viewpoints people have on their
relationships. For example, a wife with a 1950s mentality might
regard doing lots of housework and having frequent sex as part of
her marital responsibilities. The housework-sex link was found to
exist no matter what views each member held.
Housework was defined as: cleaning, preparing meals, washing
dishes, washing and ironing clothes, driving family members
around, shopping, yard work, maintaining cars, paying
bills.
Husbands spent on average 23.4 hours per week performing these
household tasks, whilst wives spent 41.8 hours a week. Husbands
spent an average 33.8 hours a week working, compared with 19.7
hours for wives. This means that the wives in the study spent a
total of 61.5 hours a week either working at their job or at home,
compared to 57.2 for their husbands. And just so you know how you
stack up, the couples in the study reported having sex 82.7 times a
year (1.6 times per week). Sexual frequency went down with age and
the length of the relationship. Protestants had more sex than the
Catholics - presumably the Catholics had more unprotected sex....
Having small children reduced frequency but once the kids were
older, the frequency went back up.
Couples who spent more time in paid work also reported more sex.
This led the authors to conclude that "individuals may be achievers
across multiple spheres." They theorise that as life gets busier
and time gets tighter, some couples can successfully balance their
time commitments to make time for sex.