Men and Housework Strongest Factor in British Divorce Rates

A new study by the London School of Economics of 3,500 British married couples disputes the Conservative argument that working women advance the probability of divorce in families. 

As working women have tried to tell men for decades: it all comes down to housework. 

The research, Men’s Unpaid Work and Divorce: Reassessing Specialisation and Trade, was carried out by Wendy Sigle-Rushton, one of several UK academics comprising the Gender Equality Network (GeNet), part of the Economic and Social Research Council’s (ESRC) Priority Network Programme.  Findings are published in the latest edition of Feminist Economics. via LSE website

Economists have spent much time making the case that working women promote divorce, without discussing or analyzing the role of men in the marriage. The new research indicates that men’s contribution to housework stabilizes marriages, whether or not the wife works outside the home. 

Dr Sigle-Rushton focused on 3,500 couples who were included in the British Cohort Study, a nationally representative study that followed the lives of 16,000 children both in one week in 1970. From that group, Dr Sigle-Rushton culled 3,500 couples who had stayed together for five years after the birth of their first child. 

From that subgroup, around 20 percent divorced by the time that child was 16.

The analysis focused on housework, shopping and chidcare tasks, as reported by the mother, to have done in the previous week.

(The research) found that, relative to families in which women are homemakers and men do little housework and childcare, the risk of divorce is 97% per cent higher when the mother works outside the home and her husband makes a minimal contribution to housework and childcare. However, there is no increased risk of divorce when the mother works and her husband’s contribution to housework and childcare is at the highest level. The lowest-risk combination is one in which the mother does not work and the father engages in the highest level of housework and childcare.

While Dr Single-Rushton found a small increase in divorce among working women, fathers’ involvement in housework was far and away the greatest predictor of divorce in families. 

Of the women in the study, only 5% were actually working full-time, when the study began. As women moved progressively deeper into the full-time workforce, one wonders about an escalation between men helping at home and the divorce rate. 

We’ve written previously about the connections between men doing housework and sex. And we know that an unhappy sex life is a major driver in the decision to divorce. And while the research results are mixed regarding the actual importance of sex in a married woman’s life, there’s plenty of research to support the idea that housework is a turn-on. Anne