Лекция: How to get your husband to help at home.

This past summer a typical day for Melissa Swartz, a 33-year-old social worker and full-time student in Toledo started with her 7.30 a.m. dash to get her 13-year-old Danielle to band practice. The rush didn’t end until 10 p.m., after her last class. She was exhausted and frustrated. She couldn’t get her husband, Mike, to help with household chores. ”He knows if he stalls long enough, I’ll do them,” she says. Mike, 32, a busy architect, just wishes she would get off his back. “I try to keep things at an even keel. At times I may slack off, but I think I do my fair share.”

A national study of 2528 mothers in 1993 found that among dual-income couples, the woman contributes two thirds of the total family time spent on housework. “While women are working more outside the home, they are not necessarily working less inside the home, “notes Michael Leeds, an economist who has studied how husbands and wives divide up household responsibilities. He discovered that more than half of the husbands spent five hours or less each week doing housework; 15 percent did none at all.

Meanwhile, nearly half of the wives did more than 20 hours of housework a week.

What is in It for him?

While it is obvious why a wife would want a more equal chore load, why would a man willingly take on more of such unrewarding work? The truth is that men benefit greatly from sharing household chores.