Today's Topic: Household division of labor

My friends, family, and most acquaintances know that I may be the world’s biggest fan of “Mad Men,” AMC’s smash hit TV show about Don Draper, an advertising genius and not-great guy who works at a Manhattan ad agency in the 1960s. I’ve seen the entire series many, many times, and I’m always tossing off little references for no one but me; if you ever catch me mumbling “A thing like that” on the subway, you have “Mad Men” creator Matthew Weiner to thank. 

Despite my fanatical love for it, I get it when people don’t like “Mad Men.” It’s a highly realistic workplace drama set in the 1960s; ipso facto, it depicts a lot of sexism. It shows the hinge point of the 20th century, when the barriers keeping women out of the workplace were beginning to erode – but the office was still tough as hell for women.

It can be shocking to be faced with the degree to which the terms “working” and “woman” just weren’t seen as compatible – in living memory. Most baby boomers remember a version of the United States where women tended the home and men worked, simple as that.

So what does all this have to do with household chores?

A whole lot, as it turns out. Today’s topic is both incredibly important and a little challenging, because it raises the question of just how far we’ve come since the “Mad Men” era. 

Here’s why, in excessively simplistic terms: In the past, men worked and women tended the home. Now, women work, and men help out with some household work. But oftentimes, they’re not helping nearly enough. 

According to a 2013 Pew Research Center survey, Don Draper’s 2010s counterpart was at least taking out the trash and helping Betty with vacuuming: Since 1965, men had doubled the amount of housework they did. 

But women still did more – about 15 hours per week, compared to nine hours per week for men. In 2021, Pew found that this gap persisted through the Covid pandemic; 59% of married or cohabiting women said they did more household chores than their spouse or partner, while 6% said their spouse or partner did more.

The latest numbers? In 2023, Pew found that in heterosexual “egalitarian marriages,” where husbands and wives each contribute about half of the couple’s earnings, wives are spending more than double the amount of time on housework than their husbands, and almost two hours more per week on caregiving. 

All this raises a big, scary question 

How much have things really changed that much from “Mad Men”’s appalling mid-century norms? Are women in 2024 expected to be both Peggy and Betty, professionally successful while maintaining a spotless home and somehow also taking care of children? 

I’m not qualified to answer that entirely, but I can tell you what experts say, which is that, to really achieve gender parity, we need to shift the focus from girlbosses to boy laundry-doers (?). 

Cailin O’Connor, an author and a professor of logic and philosophy of science at the University of California, Irvine, says that the first step is to recognize that having household and professional work divvied up along rigid gender lines once served an important purpose. 

“When you add gender to a society, you can divide labor in this very efficient and effective way that you couldn’t do without something like gender,” O’Connor told Take Care. “Once you’ve done that to a culture, there’s this logic to it.” 

The problem, according to O’Connor, is that we as a society have removed the gendered division of labor without providing an equally effective replacement. 

So how can you optimize the division of household labor?

O’Connor says it’s not just a matter of splitting up all the housework 50/50. 

“It’s not just everyone doing a little bit of everything and losing their minds,” she said. Instead, she recommends each partner taking full responsibility for certain household tasks. For example, O’Connor’s husband takes care of all the cooking, grocery shopping, and kitchen-cleaning needs, rather than the two of them alternating food-related responsibilities. 

Writer Emily Oster recommends the “Total Responsibility Transfer” method, which means that if someone is asked to take care of a certain household need, they take care of all of it – both the planning and the execution – and the other partner does their best not to interfere. 

You can also establish who’s doing the bulk of the housework by recording “time diaries” of the time you spend shopping, cooking, cleaning, and taking care of children. Once you’ve determined how much each partner is doing, you can formulate a plan for moving toward a more equitable breakdown. 

The Labor of Love app can also help you list out everything that needs to get done around the house and get rewarded for doing chores – because we all deserve a little treat. 

Be prepared to spend some real time and effort 

Getting to gender parity in your household is “a real, active process,” O’Connor says. But it’s a process that will both 1) make your life a little easier and 2) advance the cause of gender equality. I’m being a little tongue-in-cheek, but it’s only a small exaggeration to say that with every task you delegate to a male partner, you add a bit more support to the proverbial Peggy Olsons of the world.