The artful dodge of housework

When the subject is housework, Anne Ballentine describes her husband, Jeff, as "awesome." He cleans the downstairs of their home in Whitefish Bay, Wis., while she takes care of the upstairs. He does more than half of the laundry and cooking, and almost all the grocery shopping.

"My friends joke that he should run a husband camp, and others are hoping for cloning," says Mrs. Ballentine, who works for a healthcare system in Milwaukee.

Those clones would probably be worth their weight in gold, given that dust bunnies under the bed, dishes in the sink, smudges on the woodwork, and laundry in the hamper are still contentious issues for many couples. Someone must do these tasks, but who?

For 21st-century couples, the answer appears simple in theory. But "we both will" often becomes "she will" in practice. Yes, many more men are willingly pitching in at home these days, especially in caring for children. But the gap between the amount of housework fathers do and the amount mothers do has actually widened slightly, according to Rudy Seward, a sociologist at the University of North Texas in Denton. Mothers in 2003 reported doing almost three times more housework than fathers, averaging 17 hours a week. Fathers reported spending six hours, on average - down from eight hours a week in 1989.

American women are not the only ones dreaming of husband camps and cloning to help the men in their lives perfect the fine art of wielding dust mops and dish cloths. In Spain, where half the men say they do no housework, a new law requires men to share domestic tasks. Beginning this summer, men must sign an agreement as part of a marriage contract in civil ceremonies. If a husband refuses to do his share, he could face penalties in a divorce settlement if the marriage fails.

While some see the law as "ridiculous" and "unenforceable," others consider it a reminder that it takes both partners to keep a household running smoothly.

That's the message Joshua Coleman is trying to spread in his provocatively titled book, "The Lazy Husband: How to Get Men to Do More Parenting and Housework." Assuming that husbands won't read it, he is targeting it to wives. "Women will have to lead the charge on this because men won't," he says.

When men marry, many assume they'll work out an arrangement that is roughly equal, says Dr. Coleman, a psychologist specializing in relationships. But once couples have children, many experience "a subtle or overt shift toward a more traditional gender division of labor."

Despite the finger-wagging adjective "lazy" in his title, Coleman emphasizes that many men aren't lazy. "They work hard in their jobs. They come home and do things around the house. But from the wife's perspective, if the kids are in bed and she's still doing dinner dishes at 11 and he's watching TV, it's understandable that she would call it lazy."

But women also contribute to the problem, he adds. Men often find themselves exasperated by their wives' exacting standards. Explaining this gender difference to bewildered husbands, Coleman says, "She sees dirt where you see nothing, she sees chaos where you see order, she feels tormented by dishes in the sink while you just see dishes in the sink." But women are also held to higher domestic standards than men. "If a house is a mess, people still don't blame the man nearly as much as the woman."

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