It’s now 2018 and in the modern world many gender stereotypes have flown out the window. Some, however, have taken longer than others to go away — and housework seems to be one of these. Researchers have found that among older adults, women tend to spend an extra two hours per day doing household chores than men. Now, while this might not seem fair, it’s actually not as bad as it sounds. Because the women doing the lion’s share of the chores tend to have better overall health than their male counterparts.
So doing more housework equates to better health?
Well, it’s slightly more complicated. The study was huge — it looked at more than 35 thousand people from seven different countries and tried to assess how much time the adults spent on 41 common household activities each day. Tasks included things like cooking, cleaning, and gardening. They found that elderly adults who spent between three and six hours on such duties were 25 percent more likely to report good health than those who only spent an hour or two. But the other big factor here is sleep. If the participants got too much or too little of it, the health benefits of the housework became null and void.
There are some important things we can learn from this study. Here are a few I’ll highlight.
Partha’s Rx
1. Older men and women should split household chores. Doing too many — or too few — equates to poorer health.
2. Find a way to get at least seven hours of sleep per night. The study showed a clear correlation between sleep and overall wellness.
3. Split up the types of chores you do. Keep it interesting. Boredom can lead to increased stress.
4. Be supportive. If your loved one is showing signs of poor health because of too much housework, take on a greater share of the load.
Modern technology and improvements in healthcare equate to a greater percentage of people older than 65 around the world. So it’s important to get a sense of how these folks are spending their time. One of the interesting takeaways from the study is that household activities and chores are the main productive work for this segment of the population. Before the study, little was known about how housekeeping affects health. Now we know a lot more.
