Study: Men Who Cook and Clean Have Less Sex

The sweet, sexy man who unloads the dishwasher and makes a mean Bolognese is the stuff of married mom fantasies.

Or is it?

A new study published in the February issue of the American Sociological Review found that husbands who take on traditionally feminine household chores actually have less sex than men who stick to "manly" work like mowing the lawn and paying the bills. 

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“The results suggest the existence of a gendered set of sexual scripts, in which the traditional performance and display of gender is important for creation of sexual desire and performance of sexual activity,” says Sabino Kornrich, the study’s lead author and a junior researcher at the Center for Advanced Studies at the Juan March Institute in Madrid. “The importance of gender has declined over time, but it continues to exert a strong influence over individual behaviors, including sexual frequency within marriage.”

In other words, it’s hard for even modern parents to overcome deeply entrenched ideas of what makes someone masculine or feminine, and therefore desirable to you. 

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The study looked at data from the 1996 National Survey of Families and Household, which is covered straight married couples across the United States. Although the data is 17 years old, Kornich believes the things haven’t changed much since then, and the findings still apply.

Does this ring true in your relationship? Leave a comment.