Tag Archives: household chores

Less Chance of Divorce

It’s official, men who help their wives with housework, shopping and caring for children are less likely to have their marriages end in divorce, according to a study in the United Kingdom. There could be several reasons for this. One is that when the wife is working outside the home she is under a lot of stress trying to combine work as wife, mother, lover and woman in the work force. Therefore she’s less likely to have time to pay attention to her husband’s needs and more likely to feel hard done by when he does not help out. This … Continue reading →

Helpless Husbands

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Sometimes when reading, I come across husbands who haven’t the first idea how to even turn the washing machine on, let alone sort and actually do the laundry. Then there are husbands who cannot cook a meal, but would exist on take out if the wife was away, or husbands who cannot use a vacuum cleaner or … the list goes on. The thing is it doesn’t only happen in novels. I know women whose husbands are like that. Now maybe it’s the fault of the older generations when women stayed home and did all these things and men didn’t … Continue reading →

Too Valuable To Waste

Yep, we‘ve all seen it in homes of other people, maybe in our own homes the man who sits back and lets his wife do all the dishes. Let me tell you it doesn’t happen in our house. Mick washes the dishes and I dry. Yes, we vaguely toyed with the idea of a dishwasher after we moved, but never went ahead with it. One reason was expense and not having a lot of room. We’d have to lose a kitchen cupboard to put one in. But the more important reason is because that time doing dishes is put to … Continue reading →

Knowing What’s Needed

No matter what the situation is whether it’s work, sport or marriage you need to know what’s needed. For example at work you need to know what you have to do and what the boss expects of you before you can do it. On the tennis court you need to know what your partner expects, which balls you will go for if they come down the middle of the court and which they will take and you know you’re expected to play to the best of your ability. Why then do we think it should be any different when we … Continue reading →

Playfulness in Marriage

How much is playfulness part of your marriage? Marriage can become ho hum unless we invest time and creativity and effort into it. One way of keeping your marriage fresh is maintaining playfulness. Recently on an interview Andrew Denton did with Alan Alda one of the things Alda he loves about his wife is her playfulness. That showed it the photo he had of her which was a treasured keepsake. On Saturday Mick and I put up our Christmas decorations, well all except for the tree which hasn’t been bought yet. But when we went to out the lights and … Continue reading →

Would You Let Your Husband Iron His Own Shirt?

Would you let your husband iron his own shirt? Even as I write those words I can hear some woman, particularly of the older generations, reel in shock at the mere suggestion of such a thing. I have a friend around my age, who has the theory if it needs to be ironed it doesn’t get bought. She only buys clothes which can be washed and hung up and then put on or put away in the closet. Okay, I admit I don’t go quite that far. But I am a big fan of skirts that only need washing, twisting … Continue reading →

Is Quality Time a Myth?

Working women are you short changing your spouse and your children? When talking yesterday with Mick about the blog I’d written about working women and marriage, he came up with several comments I thought were worth noting about the amount of time spent with children in particular. Yes, we‘ve all heard the phrase ‘quality time’ and how parents should spend ‘quality time’ with their spouse and their children. But what does this mean exactly? The reality is that if they are working full time, the amount of time the working woman can realistically spend with their spouse and children is … Continue reading →

Working Women a Contributing Factor in Marriage and Family Break-Ups

Working women are contributing to marriage and family break-ups. A recent survey in the United Kingdom came to this conclusion. They found after a study of British childhood that ‘women’s increasing economic independence from their male partners is contributing to family break-ups which is in turn damaging children.’ At the risk of being shot down in flames, I admit I’m old fashioned enough to agree. Yet, it really stands to reason. Depending on the type of job they have, women can be earning more than their men. Some men struggle to deal with that, as it makes them feel inferior. … Continue reading →

Is There a Right Way to Load the Dishwasher?

It seems it’s been eons ago now that Jade sent me a link to an article with the subject line “housework issues.” It directed me to an article entitled “Don’t let the dishwasher ruin your marriage.” It was about a woman who’s given up loading the dishwasher because, as she put it, “No matter how I load it, my husband comes after me and reloads it.” I didn’t have a chance to write about it then. (It was around the time my mom moved in with us.) Also, housework is one of those subjects that seemed to be covered pretty … Continue reading →

News Flash: Moms Work Hard

Subtitle: DUH! A new European poll studying the amount of work an average mother completes in a day yielded some less than shocking results. (What surprised me more is why they conducted the poll in the first place.) According to the new survey, the average mother is overworked. Now, how many of us really needed an official poll to come to that conclusion? The survey found that the average mother works five-and-a-half hours a day at a paid job but also spends 45 minutes preparing meals, 42 minutes completing household chores, and 31 minutes shopping for groceries. Add to that … Continue reading →