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Married men helping out at home have less sex but happier spouses: study

Washington: Men, mopping the kitchen may not help you get lucky in the bedroom!

Men who do more household chores typically viewed as feminine - like cleaning, cooking and washing - have less sex than those who don't, according to a new study.

The findings, published in the journal American Sociological Review, are correlational, so they can't say whether dish-washing actually makes men less sexy.

"Our findings suggest the importance of socialised gender roles for sexual frequency in heterosexual marriage," said Sabino Kornrich, lead author from the Center for Advanced Studies at the Juan March Institute in Madrid.

Great mopping but no guarantee of action. Reuters

Great mopping but no guarantee of action. Reuters


The study, "Egalitarianism, Housework, and Sexual Frequency in Marriage," which considers heterosexual married couples in the US, relies on nationally representative data from the National Survey of Families and Households.


However, both men and women in couples with more gender-traditional divisions of household labour reported having had more sex than those with more egalitarian divisions.


Researchers explored the possibility that couples with more traditional divisions of labor had more sex because the husbands in those relationships were sexually coercive.

"Wives' reported satisfaction with their sex life has the same relationship to men's participation in household labour as sexual frequency.

"Had satisfaction with sex been low, but frequency high, it might have suggested coercion. However, we didn't find that," Kornrich said.

"Men who refuse to help around the house could increase conflict in their marriage and lower their wives' marital satisfaction," he said.

"Earlier research has found that women's marital satisfaction is indeed linked to men's participation in overall household labour, which encompasses tasks traditionally done by both men and women," said Kornrich.