Column
Don’t Marry a Man Who Doesn’t Vacuum
Women beware: Nearly half of American men still want a housewife
Of all the things young women are taught in order to prepare for their future, there’s one crucial piece of advice that’s so often lacking: If you are straight, don’t even think about getting married before knowing that your future husband will do his fair share of housework. I’m serious.
It may feel like a given — we’ve made so much progress on gender equality! — or an issue that you can work out and divvy up once you’re living together in wedded bliss. But the truth is that the domestic gender gap is one of the only areas where Americans haven’t moved forward significantly. In fact, we’re losing ground, and women are paying the price.
A new survey from Gallup not only shows that women continue to do the vast majority of domestic work and childcare, but that younger married couples were just as likely as their older counterparts to have an unequal division of labor at home. Which means a new generation of men — those 18–34, according to the survey — may have more feminist political values, but that they aren’t translating those beliefs to their own lives and homes.
In fact, over the last few decades, men’s attitudes toward gender roles at home have only gotten…
