Yesterday a friend pointed out an article in the Seattle PI titled, Higher pay on job linked to drop in chores at home. Here is what they found:
A recent University of Massachusetts-Amherst study finds married women do about one less hour of housework per week for every $7,500 they earn as full-time workers outside the home, regardless of the husband’s income.
Of course no one wanted to speculate as to why this is. One reason may be that a busy workload means less time at home, so you do less housework period. My thought is that the more you make, the more you can free up that dreaded “second shift” by hiring help. When you make great money, you can hire the housecleaner etc. No matter the exact reasons, one thing is clear: it is difficult to truly earn your worth if you have heavy domestic responsibilities at home. Something has to give. I stopped dusting my baseboards long ago. Then the question became: does the dust accumulate or do I hire that housekeeper?
If you have kids, ‘let the dust accumulate’ and spend some quality time with your kids…
Once you are making more money, you are creating jobs by letting the dust accumulate and hire somebody to clean it.
Good for you Mikelann!
By Ramón R.
Wow! I didn’t know that people did dust their base boards.
I think the more powerful question is “how do you want to spend your time?”The sub-questions are how much control are we each willing to surrender AND how important is the look and feel of the home environment.
The answer will be different for each person. Likely there will also be some negotiating going on. Maybe even some conflict…..
I think there are two sides to this topic.
1. I work from home and since I am always home, I am always there to make a mess of things and dirty up dishes etc. In this respect, it does create more housework.
2. Since my wife is also self employed and she works outside of the home, both of our incomes have gone up because we are both more efficient with our time since we don’t have each other for distractions during the day.
When she comes home from her jobs, she helps me pick up the mess I made but she creates one of her own every where she goes so I guess the whole thing is a wash!
With her making more money, it has actually created more housework for the both of us.
BTW- I should also note that we do not have any children and I am the neat freak and she is a bit of a slob. 🙂