"Even in relationships where both parents work full time more often than not the majority of the mental and physical burden of running the house tends to fall onto the woman."
I'd love to see the data on this.
I'd love to see the data on this.
For example my wife always makes it sound like finding shoes for the kids is the same as planning a trip to the moon. If I say I’m going to get them shoes she says I can’t be trusted. I don’t care, the kids don’t care, but boy does it stress her out every time their feet grow.
For example I found this from around 2014, it isn't strictly about dual income households, but there is data out there for that:
> Around the world, women spend two to ten times more time on unpaid care work than men.
Source: https://www.oecd.org/Dev/Development-Gender/Unpaid_Care_Work...
Of course in developing nations or other scenarios with stay at home women will see them doing more unpaid work. I'd imagine it's similar for a brief time in developed countries when women leave the workforce to have children too.
At least in my experience it seems division of overall labor is generally equal for the relationships I have seen.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/01/25/for-america...
https://news.gallup.com/poll/283979/women-handle-main-househ...
Anecdotally, I have a fairly progressive friend circle and I still think, between talking to different halves of a given hetero couple, it seems like the man tends to exaggerate how much he does around the house, how much childcare he does, how self-motivated he is to do so, etc. When asked, these men will enthusiastically agree that the split should be even when both partners are working, but walking the walk is understandably tougher. These patterns don't disappear within a generation, unfortunately. If I only spoke to the men, I'd have the same impression you do.
For the second article, it seems to be self-reported perceptions and not actual measurements. Again, it only deals with limited categories. Of course if we are looking at chores that are traditionally "women's work", some of that bias may carry over. Likewise, handyman work, appliance repair, mechanic work, paperwork, yard work, etc that are traditionally "men's work" are likely to still have more men than women saying they spend more time on that.
The third article is more what I was looking for. It's still perception based but it takes into account a wider array of tasks. It also shows how working status and income play a role. It also backs up my theory that the bias extends the other way on the traditional "men's work" portions.
So we aren't going to see that grey line hit 100% in every category, and for good reason. Specialization of labor leads to efficiency. So task assignment or self-assignemnt will go to the person who is more interested in or better at that task. I would have liked to see an overall category to see how close the overall chore and work breakdown would be to 50/50. That's really the meat of the issue - equally contributing, even if the underlying tasks are divied up. Otherwise, we can cherry pick tasks like mechanic work or dishes to fit whatever narrative we want.
(Mostly joking. But only mostly.)