Study: Sharing housework causes more couples to divorce
A Tibetan woman does housework at her relocated home built by the local government at the Liuwu Village where the Lhasa Railway Station, a terminal of the Qinghai-Tibet railway, is located on December 18, 2008 in Doilungdeqen County of Tibet Autonomous Region, China.
In a study that's sure to raise eyebrows, researchers in Norway say couples who share household chores are more likely to divorce than those in homes where the woman does most of the housework.
In fact, the divorce rate is almost 50 percent higher among couples who divy up the cooking and cleaning, Chicago TV station WLS reported.
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But it's not due to cause-and-effort so much as "modern" attitudes, Thomas Hansen, co-author of the study entitled "Equality in the Home," told Agence France-Presse.
"Modern couples are just that, both in the way they divide up the chores and in their perception of marriage" as being less sacred, he told The Telegraph. "In these modern couples, women also have a high level of education and a well-paid job, which makes them less dependent on their spouse financially.
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"They can manage much easier if they divorce."
Norway has a long tradition of gender equality, but when it comes to housework, Norwegian women still do most of it in seven out of 10 couples, UPI reported.
Researchers said the study emphasized women who did most of the chores did so of their own volition and were found to be as "happy" as those in "modern" couples, according to The Telegraph.
No word on whether Hansen has spent recent nights in his household on the couch.