This week we reported about a hidden statistical nugget in a story from China Daily, claiming that Beijing men spend almost as much time (1 hour 50 minutes) on daily household tasks as women (1 hour and 58 minutes). To test this we conducted a little survey of our own.
Early polling of beijingkids readers show women doing almost 2.5x the amount of housework compared to men, despite this original report stating that men and women were just about equal. Our tally is currently at 117 minutes for women compared to 43 minutes from men.
The original study by the Beijing survey office of the National Bureau of Statistics was created to analyze the rise in working hours of Beijingers, and polled 4,238 people older than 15 in 1,700 households. It stated that while Beijing women averaged 58 minutes less in the workplace, they worked eight minutes more than men doing chores.
While our readers’ numbers might be skewed by their dependency on ayis or mother-in-laws pitching in, the skewed ratio still holds: women in our readership group are doing nearly three times the housework than men. We hope this isn’t the case as there is much that can still be done by men outside of cleaning and cooking to share the mental load. Help us to more accurately determine who’s doing the lion’s share by forwarding our survey to your friends and acquaintances so that we can conclude our ultimate treatise on the Beijing expat family chore wars.
While it might be the tendency to believe that men don’t do their share of housework, times are definitely changing and it is becoming the norm for the patriarch to shoulder more and more of these household responsibilities.
If you are a mother out there looking for more support from the old man, set aside some time to develop a plan or a chore wheel to support each other through equally divvying out these essential responsibilities. Also, check this list out for more ways dads can help share the mental/physical load of parenthood.
