Men are better at housework - says the Daily Mail

[ABetaDad]

As we have Kim & Aggie coming into MNHQ I thought this might be of interest.

How men clean up in the battle of the sexes

"Women have long complained that men don?t pull their weight around the house.
But what a man?s housework efforts lack in quantity is made up for in quality, it seems.
Men are more thorough and less likely than women to cut corners when it comes to chores, a survey has revealed."

I think this could be summed up with a little edit of your thread title:

Men are better - says the Daily Mail

well, to a degree I can see what they mean, my dh will do a much more thorough job of say, cleaning the kitchen cupboard door fronts than I would.
But that's because I do every other frickin job in the kitchen too and have really run out of steam and can't be arsed.
It's like sausages, my dh cooks wonderful sausages, I can't cook them to save my life - and why?
Because he will stand in the kitchen and cook sausages.
I will cook sausages, stack or unstack the dw, make packed lunches, bicker with dd over her homework, read her school letters, mash pototaes etc etc

oh good. they can do it then.

Oh yes.

Men are better at everything .. including having babies and breastfeeding ... says the DM

Very good point QOD. My DH doesn't clean the kitchen very often (I am SAHM, he works full-time). But when he does I have to admit he does a better job than me- maybe it's the novelty?

GiantJenga

But utter bollocks to the original statement! I totally agree with QOD. Easy to do something thoroughly when it's the only thing you're doing!

My DH does absolutely loads around the house and is not brilliant at it, but I don't complain becuase of how much he does.

The Daily Mail is a crock of shit - I do hope they print that

HA HA HA

I was going to say something similar to QOD.

If dh was going to do something like tidying out a cupboard, he would spend the whole day doing one. However, he wouldn't have a clue what to do with the stuff he had decided should no longer go in the cupboard and would instead just leave it lying around, the children would not have got fed and he would not have paused to take the washing out of the washing machine or do the dishes from breakfast. Result: immaculate cupboard, rest of house in total chaos.

By contrast, if I was doing it, the children would be fed, the washing sorted (and several more loads done), all the dishes would be washed and put away, the floors would be swept and the cupboard sorted. I would not have pondered at great length where everything should go or taken everything out and reviewed it item, by item. I would have straightend things up and chucked out the stuff that I couldn't remember using recently.

The video comments on the BBC website are interesting too.

I tend to agree with the bloke right at the end "if the women keep practicing [housework] they will do well... and get up to men's standards as well."

To be fair the other papers have the story too. Interesting readers comments in the Daily Mirror

Totally agree with QOD my DH is exactly the same. I know when he sees me do something without full concentration he is thinking "why don't you just do one thing at a time" but there are not enough hours in the day to do what I do one thing at a time...

...actually I lie there probably are but when would I MN?

If this is the case, why are my ocunters covered in crumbs, the sink full of stinky cloths and bits of old food etc? Oh yes, DH cleared up breakfast. He's willing, but just doesn't have the standards...

The thing is that there may be something in the conclusion that men do not do it as often but do it to higher standards.

Most of the top chefs are men but relatively fewer men cook at home than women.

Window cleaners and refuse collectors are generally men but relatively fewer men clean at home than women.

"there may be something in the conclusion that men do not do it as often but do it to higher standards"

but it's a meaningless conclusion unless men do it as often as women but still to higher standards.

but what's your opinion on that conclusion ABetaDad? Should men be congratulated on their higher standards or berated for the infrequency of their efforts?

Why don't we just leave all the housework to men, then, as they are so superior at it ........

I agree that men can be very good indeed at specific domestic tasks. DP is brilliant at loading the dishwasher, for example (though fairly slow and methodical too).

Where he is clearly less able that I is in the range of domestic tasks he both masters (about 00.01% 1% of the ones I do) and his ability to perform them simultaneously and repetitively/routinely .

On closer reading of the article it is, unsurprisingly, bollocks. Very light on statistics and the ones they've included are dubious.

How does "It found that men are 33 per cent more likely than their partners to bother vacuuming under the beds or furniture" fit with "Among women, 70 per cent admitted not vacuuming under the beds or furniture, compared with 61 per cent of men"?

And with this: "Half of the women polled also admitted to dusting just surfaces to save time, while only 47 per cent of men said they did the same", I'd like to know what they chose to interpret as 'half' as 47 per cent is very close to half.

DH cleans frequently and competently. I doubt he is that unusual.

In our household that could not be further from the truth.

If I say "Please do not put jeans in a mixed coloured wash" and other, slightly less pleasant variations, one more time, my head will explode.

Just figured out the vacuuming thing. But it's still bollocks. Based on the result that 39 per cent of men bother where 30 per cent of women do, but it sounds better if they say men are 33 per cent "more likely" to bother.

lol - let the men do the housework for one week & then check the results

This is sort of true of DP. He's a messy laze-ass (by his own admission) and unless nagged he wouldn't do any housework for weeks. But when he does, it is much more thorough, takes ages and involves as many of the most brightly coloured and highly toxic chemicals as he can lay his hands on. Then, infuriatingly, he goes on and on about he used to work for a professional cleaning company (yes, as a holiday job, about 20 years ago) and knows what he's doing

I don't think that's "better" though - being better at housework involves seeing what needs doing and doing it without a fuss, efficiently enough to keep things ticking over, again and again, down the days and weeks, as necessary. DP's cleanathon, when it happens, is intrusive and smelly and all about him being the star of the show.

So I am better at housework, not him

To be fair though, I'm talking about his natural state. What actually happens now is that he does do the dishes every day and the hoovering regularly, because of the nagging

LibrasBiscuits - well as the person in our house who does 100% of cooking, 100% of gardening and 90% of cleaning but not allowed by DW to put the washing machine on at all my conclusion is that men do focus more intensely on one task they are commited and interested in doing.

I think it is somthing to do with male vs female brains. Its the 'man looking' thing. Men will happily spend hours cleaning and maintaning their car because it is a localised project thy are very interested in. Men do not notice general dirt and muck building up around the house because their eye and brain does not register it. If a man is given a task that is localised in one place (e.g cleaning the oven, cooking a special BBQ meal) then they are less likely to be distracted by other tasks half way through than a woman. Hence men are more likely to do a single task more thorougly but leave 6 other tasks not done at all.

Women tend to get distracted because of their better peripheral vision and tendency to multi task wth their brains. I draw this concusion from watching DW who drives me mad when she cleans. I have very occassionally sat watching the process she uses and to be frank she spends more time walking back and forth than actually doing the task itself. I like to be eficient and focussed.

She will not let me near the washing machine because I like to do laundry in a different way and she does not agree and we end up arguing. I like to let big efficient loads of similar colours build up and do 6 marathon washes in 24 hours while she spends hours sorting mixed loads doing 1 - 2 loads per day.

All of the above are of course characterisaions and tendencies on average - not absolute rules. Increasing numbers of men do of course play the SAHD role and of course clean, cook, etc - just in a different way from women.