After getting married, my mil said, “Men need more time to just do their own thing than women, don’t you think?” I replied, “No, they just want it and expect it, but that’s just entitled sexist bullshit.”
When we had a vacation with them after getting married, fil started explaining how all the tech in the house worked to my husband and mil started showing me where all the cleaning supplies were. I said, “going to stop you there” and swapped out with my husband. He’s a massive technophobe, and he did most of the cleaning (I was seven months pregnant and breast feeding a one year old at the time).
Men are not at all afraid to set the patterns of the house in their favour if you let them. A very rare few will gravitate to an even distribution of chores on their own behalf. For the rest, if you want equality, you need to be prepared to advocate for it constantly without backing down.
I suppose it depends on what you consider an easy life. A lot of people are very conflict avoidant and so I suppose for them an easy life is doing all the housework and avoiding constant arguments. Personally, I’m happy to argue a whole lot in order to get a living situation I consider to be fair (and there certainly are a lot of arguments at my house). I can completely see why many people don’t want to fight those battles, particularly if the man in their life can be aggressive, intimidating, sulky or vindictive (which accounts for a massive proportion of them).
My in-laws love their sons a great deal. I don’t think they’re quite so enthusiastic about me.