Can picking up a broom get a man more va-va-voom? That was the research premise for a recent study by Constance Gager, PhD, a sociologist in the department of family and child studies at Montclair State University in New Jersey.
Dr. Gager started with the well-documented fact that housework is typically shared unevenly between husbands and wives even when both have jobs outside the home. “Given that 77% of women with kids age six and older are in the labor force, we wondered why men aren’t contributing more to housework,” Dr. Gager told me. “So we asked, ’What would encourage them to do so?’ And we came up with the obvious hypothesis — more sex.”
On average, the wives in Gager’s study spent nearly twice as much time on household tasks as did their husbands: About 42 hours a week for the women versus 23 hours for the men. While the husbands logged more paid working hours, about 34 hours/week versus 20 hours for the women, when the total hours worked (jobs plus housework) were combined, women worked more than the men by about three hours a week. (Three hours may not sound like much-unless you are suffering from a chronic lack of sex…) Also, the data did not capture all the time women spend organizing, planning and forecasting for the household, tasks with which Dr. Gager’s research shows they want more help.
Dr. Gager then looked more deeply into the study participants’ home lives, and here’s where it gets really interesting: For both sexes, it appears that the harder you work, the harder you play. In other words, more hours spent on household labor, on average, meant more hours of sexual activity. This surprise finding held true for both husbands and wives in all types of work.
Energy for Everything?
I asked Dr. Gager what explanation she had for her findings, and she told me that the study was not designed to explore the reasons behind the results. But, she said, the research team is willing to speculate. “We don’t think it’s causative, but we do know that the more time is spent on housework, the more time gets spent on sex, so it might be reflective of an underlying trait: Being a go-getter with high energy.” In other words, Dr. Gager said, the hardest workers may be people who attack life with gusto, and it seems they get a lot out of it, if you know what I mean…of course you do.
This intriguing finding bodes well for people who have the energy to take on both work and family chores. “As life gets busier and time gets tighter, there are people who can successfully balance their multiple time commitments,” said Dr. Gager. “They devote their time to paid work and housework while maintaining an active sex life. Rather than compromise their romantic life because of work demands, this group of go-getters makes sex a priority.”
So does that mean that if you start doing more vacuuming you’re more likely to get lucky, regardless of your sex? Maybe. In the doctor’s words, “It couldn’t hurt!” Hey, a lot can happen in three extra hours a week.
Source(s):
Constance Gager, PhD, lead researcher, sociologist and assistant professor, department of family and child studies, Montclair State University, New Jersey.
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