There's A Key Difference Between The Chores Men And Women Take On

LOADING ERROR LOADING In previous generations, household and child care duties were mainly the domain of women. Research on the division of household labor has found that men are often in charge of tasks they can do on their own schedule, “while women pick up responsibilities that are difficult to put off or reschedule and inherently forfeit their right to choose when the tasks get done,” author Eve Rodsky wrote in her 2019 book “Fair Play.” Rodsky refers to these immovable tasks as the “daily grinds” — “time-sucking jobs that must be done regularly, repetitively, and many at a very specific time.” Halfpoint Images via Getty Images According to research on the topic, women are generally responsible for more of the time-sensitive and repetitive household tasks. As a result of the many inflexible demands on their plates, “women often may feel more like prisoners of their household routine,” Saxbe has previously said. “The person who’s more responsible for the daily inflexible tasks loses autonomy over their time while the other maintains theirs,” Laura Danger — an educator who facilitates workshops on domestic labor and co-hosts the “Time To Lean” podcast — told HuffPost. The same can’t be said about the dishes or dinners.” “Being responsible for meeting the essential everyday needs of the household is not the same as mowing the lawn once a week.” - Laura Danger, domestic labor educator and podcast host And the constantly recurring nature of these duties means that the people who perform them may never really feel “done.” “You may be an amazing chef who really loves cooking new recipes but when you have no other option but to cook three meals a day, seven days a week until the end of time, the repetition and monotony of the task can almost make it intolerable,” Danger said.