THE TRUTH ABOUT WHO REALLY DOES THE HOUSEWORK!

Is your other half pulling their weight around the house? We couples asked five to keep a diary for a week. The result...

ASK any couple to list their top ten marital flashpoints, and chances are the division of labour will rank pretty highly. Who does what, who doesn’t do what, and — crucially — who does the most.

Of course, this argument is a relatively new phenomenon. In generations past, it was more usual for men to go to work and women to stay at home, shouldering the burden of the cooking, cleaning, laundry and childcare.

Nowadays, with three-quarters of mothers with dependent children in full or part-time work, men are having to do their fair share.

But what is a fair share? Half and half? Yes, in an ideal world, but how many of us can say we share the load equally? So maybe the secret to a happy marriage is accepting there’s no such thing as 50:50. Bake Off winner Nadiya Hussain certainly thinks so, saying recently that she and her husband had come to realise this some time ago. Pre-Bake Off, she did 95 per cent of the chores and he did five, while these days it’s more like 60 to him and 40 to her.

So is she right that it’s unrealistic to aim for 50:50? ‘Everyone does the work split differently, and what’s important is looking at what works for you as a couple practically and playing to your strengths,’ says Relate councillor Dee Holmes.

‘It’s not really about 50:50, because how do you even measure that? Is vacuuming upstairs equal to time spent doing the washing on a Saturday? What matters is that you communicate and feel appreciated for whatever jobs you do.’

We asked five couples to keep a diary, recording the household chores they did over a week, to see just how much work they were both putting in . . .