Fighting over Household Chores

The study was conducted by a company that sells coffee maker cleaners. The company is called Durgol. The study was reported by something called the South Western News Service. SWNS. I have no idea what that it. It was reprinted in the New York Post. I know lots about the New York Post, a hometown newspaper. 

The study involves why couples get into fights. You might have thought, because all sorts of therapists have been telling you, that couples fight because they are having too much bad sex. Or, not enough sex. Nothing is quite as lucrative as selling sex to couples. Better yet, selling it and pretending that you are enhancing mental health.

Naturally, you would be thinking of the issue in terms of married couples. As it happens, married couples are passe… Now, the correct term is “living companions.”

This saves us the indignity of defining the nature of their relationship. And it also saves us the embarrassment of seeing which living companion, the one of the male gender persuasion or the one of the female gender persuasion, is producing all the ruckus over the dirty dishes, the unvacuumed shag rug and the dirty laundry lying on the floor next to the hamper.

To be fair, for all I know, the problem arises when people are living with roommates. But I suspect that living companions is not designed to cover up the nature of roommating, but of marriage and cohabitation.

In any event, no matter what you think, it turns out that more than a few living companions fall out over who is doing or not doing which chores. You thought it was all about sex. It’s really all about chores.

Here is the Post report:

Conducted by OnePoll on behalf of Durgol, the survey examined the division of chores between respondents and those they live with.

Forty-two percent said they share the chore responsibilities in the home, but that doesn’t mean it always works out as it should.

Messiness definitely gets to people, seeing as the average respondent recleans two items a week that someone else tidied first.

Sometimes that cleaning frustration spills over into fights. Sixty-seven percent admitted to getting in an argument about chores —and the average respondent bickers about cleanliness just over three times a week.

There’s all sorts of little things that can under people’s skin, but 45 percent named leaving dishes in the sink as the number one pesky, messy culprit.

Other common annoyances included: leaving the toilet seat up (38 percent), leaving cabinet drawers ajar (37 percent), forgetting to completely close the fridge (29 percent) and leaving caps off items in the fridge (27 percent).

Leaving cups and dishes around the home (26 percent), forgetting to turn off the lights (25 percent), not closing chip bags (25 percent), overloading the garbage can (25 percent) and playing loud music (25 percent) rounded out the top 10 irritants.

Obviously, the representative of the company that makes cleaning products recommends that people use the right cleaning products. We report it because, why not?

In truth, if we had to decide which of two members of said domestic partnership is more concerned about the open chip bags… you do not need to guess. As for which partner is more likely to fly into a rage because the toilet seat was left up, again, this is not a mystery.

In truth, women care far more about the tidiness of their homes. Women define themselves, in some part, by their ability to make a home. I recognize that the concept has gone out of style, thanks to you know who, but still, human behavior does not just change because you want it to change. 

In short, feminists insisted that men must do their fair share of household chores. But, men do not care about said chores. Women do. Besides, women prefer to exercise control and authority over their homes, attitude that does not exactly work well with the idea that men should be doing their fair share.

As a formula, dividing household chores equally between men and women does not work. Empowering women to scream at their husbands for not tidying up after meals is a formula for a broken relationship. Imagining that you can cure it with good sex is delusional.

Will anyone imagine that this merely proves the value of the old division of household labor? Not a chance.