Are You This Whipped?: Husbands, Housework & Sex

A very interesting post from Debbie Schlussel on husbands doing household chores.


Are You This Whipped?: Husbands, Housework & Sex
By Debbie Schlussel
They do these studies and publish the results all the time: men who do housework and share chores with their wives have a better sex life and happier marriage. I smell baloney. The results are always the same, including the pronouncements of a recent study that came to the same conclusion and was eagerly touted by Wall Street Journal “Work & Family” columnist Sue Shellenbarger.
NOT Sexy
A new study shows that for husbands and wives alike, the more housework you do, the more often you are likely to have sex with your spouse.
Earlier studies have hinted at this connection for men; the sight of a husband mopping the floor or doing dishes sparks affection in the hearts of many wives. But the more-housework-equals-more-sex link for wives, documented in a study of 6,877 married couples published online recently in the Journal of Family Issues, is a surprise. . . .
But for some high achievers who take a “work hard, play hard” approach to life, researchers say, working hard in one domain produces more energy for others. The study also found a correlation between hours spent on paid work and the frequency of sex in marriage.
Uh, yeah, I’d say that’s the more impressive part than cleaning the house. If you can’t appreciate a man going to work and bringing home a paycheck, you’re vacant. Withholding sex from a guy who works to support your family, just because he won’t clean the bathroom is sickening. And you need to be married to Gloria Steinem, not a man.
Many husbands and wives I interviewed offered an additional explanation—that housework may be a proxy for a general willingness to invest in shared interests, a symbol of commitment to home and hearth. Perhaps “working on the same task … makes the couple remember why they married—to be on the same team, to build a life,” Ms. Danis says.
PUH-LEEZE. If you need to see your husband cleaning your counters in order to remember why you’re married to him, perhaps a divorce is in order. And you need to ask yourself why you “can’t remember” why you married, when you spend his paycheck? Isn’t working to feed the family “working on the same task”? Anyone who doesn’t get that is the real source of the marital woes.
Personally, I wouldn’t find a guy who would do housework and chores for me very sexy. It’s not very masculine, and it’s a sign I don’t appreciate the work he does all day at his real job. It’s degrading for a man. (Repairing things is a different story. That’s a manly thing.) And remember, we’re not talking Mr. Moms, here–an entirely different topic and even more unsexy. This is about working people, who have to come home and then work again . . . at chores (because the missus demands it in exchange for sex).
Is it really a good thing that men engage in womanly duties in order to get sex? No way. Are women really giving men a “happier marriage” by withholding sex unless their husbands clean toilets, do laundry, or take out the garbage? Only if they want to be married to women with penises.
Because that’s basically what’s happening. When you blur the gender roles, feminize the men and masculinize the women, it’s not a good thing. And with many wives working and their men doing housework, America’s married women who force their husbands to do what was a woman’s traditional role in order to get what was supposed to be a given, essential part of a marriage (sex), it makes a mess of things. Sexual blackmail may have great short-term results, but I’ll bet long-term these marriages aren’t the ones that last.
Matriarchies always fail, and not just in nations . . . but also in family households.
And while your kids may not know what goes on in the bedroom, they’re definitely influenced when they see daddy doing the dishes and vacuuming and mommy ordering him around. If you think that kind of thing breeds strong men and feminine women, think again. It’s the exact opposite.
But, hey, if you wanna raise wimpy sons and bossy, shrewish daughters, it’s an awesome teaching tool.
So, how is it in your marriage (if you’re married)? Who does the housework? Are you “whipped”?
Remember: Chickification Nation is the Formula for Disintegration.