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This is the kind of reasoning that drives me insane. When most men say "if my girlfriend didn't work, she should do more chores" that is exactly what they mean. That's it. As for studies, nobody was talking about that, so it is irrelevant. This isn't even a man vs woman thing, the same logic could be replied in reverse if I were staying home with the kids and my wife was bringing home the bacon.

And I'm saying that the view should be "if my girlfriend doesn't help maintain the relationship, then I'm leaving, and if I'm too demanding in what I need from the relationship then she leaves." This only works if there's no stigma associated with breaking up, which is the modern view. (Not only that, but I support nationalized health care in part so that each person in a relationship can leave without being dependent on the other person's insurance or other medical coverage.)

Therefore, I do not think it's proper to reduce the issue to a trade-off between working vs. doing more chores, because that provide no insight into the underlying complications of a relationship.

I gave some clear counter-examples for why that simple viewpoint may not be reasonable: non-work based income (e.g., disability pay or trust fund), going to school, or simply that the other person is making enough money that they can easily hire people to do the work. My wife, btw, gets disability from the Army and is going to school full-time, so I can easily relate here.

I can give more examples. Suppose the wife has a take-home pay of $45K and the husband wants to be a concert pianist, but there are no jobs open in the area. So the husband practices 6+ hours a day (in the expectation of a job for the future). Is that non-paying practice "working"? What if that husband also does occasional piano lessons at $15/hour, bringing in $150/week? Are chores now exempt because there is some paying work?

Let's say that the wife has a take-home pay of $88K, which is easily enough to support a couple, only the wife wants a larger house while the husband wants to volunteer full-time at the local animal shelter. The wife could demand that since she brings home the family income then he should do more chores around the house. In that way they wouldn't have to pay the house cleaner to come in, pay for laundry services, nor buy as much take-out, and so save up in order to buy a bigger house (which the husband would then need to clean). That she can demand such is clear.

But it's also clear that the underlying issue here isn't "doing chores" vs. "bringing home the bacon." So saying that "If my girlfriend did not work, I would ask her to take care of all the chores and meals" is a uselessly simple statement. And I don't even think it's true for you or for the original poster.

Suppose you become seriously ill and can't work for a year. Your wife gets a job, while you're unable to do all but the most basic of chores at home. Would your inability to do the rest of the chores be sufficient justification for your wife to divorce you? I didn't think so. Though in truth, it is stressful and quite a few marriages don't survive this sort of incident, I don't think the main reason is that one person couldn't do all of the chores while the other works.

You seem to be inserting a lot of hypotheticals here. I don't remember the GGP saying anything about "chores will be distributed inversely proportional to % of household income provided".

Since we have no reason to believe that the poster was rich enough to hire somebody to do all the chores and that neither him nor his spouse had a disability that would prevent them from performing chores we can assume that he simply meant "if she would otherwise be idle I would expect her to help with chores".

Of course I am. I don't like the "Even in a modern context". That statement papers over all the details that show why the statement is useless as a means to understand the modern context. My hypotheticals are examples of how that view cannot be applied to many modern contexts.

You complain about hypotheticals. This whole tangent started with the hypothetical "if she would otherwise be idle" so it isn't like I started it. But you'll see that I also gave a non-hypothetical. My wife doesn't work. I do. She goes to school full-time and gets disability money from the army. Should she do all of the household chores because I'm the one who is earning the money? Maybe. If she wants to. But it's not predicated on that I'm the one making the money and she isn't.

The disagreement between me and others here seems to be because there are two issues at play: one is the personal view of the commenter, regarding what that commenter expects from a relationship, and the other the extension of that view to others.

The former I find somewhat crude and distasteful but acceptable because breaking up or getting a divorce has much less of a stigma than 100 years ago. It's the expansion of that view as a generally acceptable cultural goal or justification that I'm complaining about.

I mentioned "chores will be distributed inversely proportional to % of household income provided" as an example how the commenter's view is not a useful guideline. The view is absolute: if the girlfriend doesn't work then she should spend not more than 20 hours a week doing chores. My question - meant to highlight the useless of that guideline - is: if the girlfriend works for 1 hour a month, does that mean she doesn't need to do any chores? Almost certainly not. But the guideline says nothing about how to handle that case, which means it's a rather overly specific guideline.

(Now excuse me. I need to put the next load of wash on the line. It's my turn to do laundry. :) )

I really don't understand your point. Different households are always going to have different arrangements regards things like chores.

I don't think the original comment said anything along the lines of "here is an equation that everyone needs to apply in order to decide who does the dishes".

Just that if you have a situation where one person has significantly more free time than the other it wouldn't seem unreasonable to expect them to do more chores. Of course in real life there can always extra variables that complicate things. These things usually manifest themselves as domestic arguments, so are best discussed up front.

He never mentions money when talking about their pre-seperation life. The post you're replying to is clearly a discussion of time, not money, and you've somehow twisted it into "The amount of chores one does is inversely proportional to the amount of money brought home?". Stop trolling.

Agree. s/girlfriend/roommate/ and it doesn't sound "unreasonable" at all

s/girlfriend/mother/g and is it still unreasonable? Your widowed mother lives with you, and doesn't have job or enough income to live on her own - do you kick her out if she doesn't make you meals three times a day?

I get the feeling you're reading between the lines and that the original comment was made to be reversible (if his girlfriend worked full-time and he stayed at home, he would expect himself to have 20h of housework as well).

I don't think it is belittling - I would gladly do the same as well. In fact, during the period of time my girlfriend was going to school, I did all of the chores because her degree was very stressful (high cost, high rate of failure) -- despite working fulltime myself.

Respectfully (!), your conclusion relies on a fallacy (perhaps more than one type). This type of fallacy is called an "argument from silence", in which you make an assumption based on a lack of information provided:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_silence

In other words, without knowing all the details of my life (or Einstein's) you can not really conclude our motives, outlook on sexism, etc.