Who gets the most free time in your house?
Figures suggest that women have five hours less leisure time a week – but whose fault is that? A husband and wife ‘discuss’
Annabel Venning
Gender inequality has never been bigger news: women are undermined, underpaid and underrepresented, from Hollywood to the BBC and the Cabinet – still predominantly male. The battle for equality is not going well on the home front, either, as new statistics show women shoulder more of the domestic workload, while men do less.
The Office of National Statistics has reported that the amount of time women spend on leisure activities has fallen from an average of 39.24 hours a week in 2000 to 38.25 hours in 2015. Meanwhile, men are spending more time on themselves – a luxurious 43 hours a week of “He-time”, slightly up from 42.88 hours in 2000.
This disparity comes as no surprise. The days when a man came home from his busy office job and plopped himself in an armchair, pipe in mouth and slippers on feet, while his wife did all the cooking and childcare, are not – it turns out – so far behind us. In fact, things haven’t changed much at all. Yes, more women are in paid work today, but we still do the lion’s share of the domestic duties, while these latest statistics show men are not only not picking up the slack, but are simply becoming even slacker.
The moment we leave our desks, we plunge into another workplace of childcare, food shopping, multiple loads of laundry, filling in school forms, booking doctors and vet appointments – each individual task doesn’t take long but add them together and it’s a wonder we women have time to brush our teeth, let alone luxuriate in a long bath. Even our thinking time is taken up tackling what has been dubbed the “mental load” – all the planning of what needs to be done next.
Meanwhile, what are our menfolk doing? They may not be as obviously idle as Fifties pipe-and-slippers man, but they indulge themselves in different ways.
Some men disappear for hours every weekend on long cycle rides, or training for extreme marathons, triathlons or other crazy, competitive Lycra-clad capers while their harried partners spend the weekends ferrying children around, cooking and cleaning.
All this was brilliantly captured in the recent Motherland series with Anna Maxwell Martin’s “absent” husband constantly telling her he totally had her back as he spent another weekend on a stag do.
In our 16 years of marriage, I have moulded (or nagged) my husband, Guy, from utterly undomesticated bachelor into relatively modern man. We share equally the cooking, school runs, homework and supermarket shopping. Nor does he disappear on regular “boys” ski trips or golf tours. But his default setting remains that time away from his desk is his time.
Whereas I – and most women – think: “What needs doing next?” There’s always something. Chores such as laundry, changing sheets, wiping the table, clearing out cupboards or drawers too full to close – all these Guy considers unnecessary and beyond his remit.
“Go for it!” is his response if I suggest tackling them. “I’m not stopping you.”
In the evenings, he’ll settle on the sofa with a book, while I scurry around. Enlisting his help to put the Christmas decorations in the attic, I felt like Theresa May in Brussels: facing a tedious negotiation with a stubborn adversary.
Only recently has he started taking the bins out, down our long, muddy track. Previously, he refused, saying: “It’s sexist to make it a man’s job.”
Going on domestic strike doesn’t work either. Everyone runs out of underwear, the house becomes a cesspit and I eventually crack.
It’s not entirely his fault. Like many men of his age (46), he grew up believing that domestic chores were not his responsibility, whereas I did my own laundry and ironing from the age of 13.
But judging by the statistics – women under 35 have even less leisure time than men the same age – we can assume younger men are not much better.
So what is the solution? We must drum into our sons – and daughters – that equality begins at home. Either that or let squalor and chaos reign.
Guy Walters
Despite being 46 and having been married for nearly 17 years, when it comes to leisure time, I confess that I still think like a bachelor in my twenties – or perhaps even a child. When I’m not working, I’m playing. I have no instinctive recognition of that unpleasant in-between netherworld of chores, admin, errands and duties.
Such an attitude is doubtlessly enormously immature, and I’m sure it does me no favours. All I can plead in a pretty poor defence is that I’m not the only one. These new statistics reveal that men aged 45 to 54 enjoy 40.6 hours of leisure time a week, which is six hours and 18 minutes more than women in the same age group. With our marriage, that discrepancy is even worse – I dare not say better – as my 44-year-old wife falls into a different demographic, and apparently has seven hours and 42 minutes less leisure time than I do.
That’s a lot of time. What it represents is me sitting on my posterior watching 10 episodes of House of Cards in a row while Annabel goes shopping, cleans the bathroom, sews on name tapes and scrubs the grill pan. It’s also the equivalent of my spending two evenings in the Queen’s Head while she irons, hems curtains and cooks my dinner for when I eventually roll back in.
However, I’m somewhat suspicious. The statistics are not quite in the “damned lies” category, but I do think they exaggerate the true picture. Yes, Mrs Walters has undoubtedly less free time than I do, but I dispute that the discrepancy is the same as a transatlantic flight. It’s probably more like a short-hop to Madrid.
So why is this?
It’s partly a product of my laziness, but also because I think she really does far too much. Like many women, she’s got a sense of guilt about the state of the house and is constantly doing things. Often, when I’m sitting on the sofa with a whisky, flicking through a magazine while a snoozing Labrador rests its warm muzzle on my lap, I find it deeply annoying when I hear the infernal clattering coming from the kitchen, or the whining sound of vacuuming from upstairs.
My bristling thoughts are always: “Just leave it! Why does this need to be done now? Why does some of it need to be done at all?”
I suspect that such noisy and demonstrative displays of domesticity are intended to make me feel guilty and to get off my backside and help. Sometimes I do, because I am not that unreconstructed. Honest. But on other occasions, I feel that my leisure time should not be disturbed by chores that I regard as largely unnecessary, and if she wants to get on and do them, then fine.
Why am I – and so many other men – like this? I blame the parents. I know it’s easy to do so, but I was brought up by a very kind mother who did a lot for my brother, father and me, and I’m obviously spoiled when it comes to regarding non-working hours as sacrosanct.
At the moment, I think my wife and I have reached an accommodation. We more or less have our chores delineated, but I acknowledge she does more. And that’s her choice.
For saying that, I can now see myself taking the bins out for life.