Do modern couples share the domestic chores equally?
childcare. Around two out of three mothers of young children have jobs, encouraged by family- friendly and flexible working laws and the need for many families to have two incomes in order to pay mortgages and meet the bills. Meanwhile men, who frequently still bear the main financial burden of supporting their families – or feel they should – suffer anxiety about retaining their job in a time of economic crisis. With the office norm now 9am-6pm, and job demands intensifying, stress levels are a worry for both employees and employers. Stress and mental illness is responsible for more than half of all working days lost every year, and the economic impact is unequivocal: mental illness costs employers an estimated £26 billion a year. In his research using data from Understanding
Society, Dr Mark L Bryan, of the Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER) at the University of Essex, found nearly half – 46 per cent – of workers had felt tense during the last few weeks, 27 per cent uneasy and 24 per cent worried at least some of the time. Women reported feeling more stressed than men. More hours were associated with greater anxiety at all levels of responsibility. Full-time workers average around 37 hours per week, part-time workers around 15.5 hours per week and just under a fifth of people in employment work more than 45 hours a week, says the Office for National Statistics. By EU standards this is a high proportion of ‘long hours’ workers, though other developed countries such as Australia, Japan and the US have more than the UK. The irony is that while marriage provides the obvious emotional shelter for those suffering
from stress, many women turn to friends and family. Professor Heather Laurie, also of ISER, used data from Understanding Society which asked respondents to rate how supportive their spouse or partner was on a number of measures. The majority of people were positive – 88 per cent said their partner understood the way they felt, 94 per cent said they could rely on their partner, and 90 per cent said they could talk to their partner ‘a lot’ or ‘somewhat’ about their worries. However, men were significantly more likely than women to say their partner criticised them a lot – just under one in three of men compared with one in five of women. Women were more likely to say their partners let them down or got on their nerves. Men who had a spouse or partner relied heavily on them for positive social support while women tended to look more widely to other family members and friends. It remains to be seen whether the ‘chore wars’
widen this trend. n
Sarah Womack is former Social Affairs Correspondent of the Daily Telegraph
i
Understanding Society is a world-leading study of the socio- economic circumstances and attitudes of 100,000 individuals in 40,000 British households.
It is funded by the ESRC and run by the Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER).
Understanding Society: Findings 2012 is the second volume of findings from the survey and includes some of the first longitudinal research to make use of the very latest data, and a number of articles analysing the unique ethnic minority boost sample. Web
www.understandingsociety.org.uk
SPRING 2012 SOCIETY NOW 11
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