According to recent reports, Australian men are not good at sharing the housework and childcare duties. Yet compared to some other countries like Italy and France, they stack up okay.
Although Aussie men do less than women, Dr. Lyn Craig, from the Social Research Centre of University of NSW, says part of the problem is the long hours worked by Australian men. The time is on average 10-11 hours a day. This is one of the reasons a man I know chose to give up his well paid job and re-train for work where he would see more of his wife and family.
Combine the hours spent at paid work with their domestic chores and they come out as working harder than those in Denmark, France and Italy but around the same as men in the USA. Of course they men are still working less than Australian mothers.
Australian men and women spend more time with their children than parents in other countries do. Only those in USA came close. French men spend on average 20 minutes a day with their children under five. A bit hard to build any sort of relationship in 20 minuets a day, I’d think.
Peter Fairbrother, a husband and father from Balgowlah, NSW ‘ thinks fathers are rushed off their feet not only because of long hours, but because of the new norm for children to be involved in a lot of organized activities.’ I wonder though, instead of over organizing our kids whether it wouldn’t be more beneficial for parents to spend more time with them, reading to them, playing board games or kicking a ball and talking to them instead of taking them to organized activities.
Obviously long hours spent in paid work is going to impact not just on families but on marriages as well. Maybe we just all need to be focused less on chasing the top career and all the things that go with it and concentrate more on working on our marriages and families? I guess it all depends on how much we value them. What do you think?
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