Couples who share housework more likely to divorce: study

In a study that might upset advocates of gender-equality, researchers have found that divorce rates are far higher among "modern" couples who share the housework than in those where the woman does the lion's share of the chores.

The Norwegian study found that the divorce rate among couples who shared housework equally was around 50 per cent higher than among those where the woman did most of the work, The Telegraph reported.

"What we've seen is that sharing equal responsibility for work in the home doesn't necessarily contribute to contentment," said Thomas Hansen, co-author of the study entitled 'Equality in the Home'.

The lack of correlation between equality at home and quality of life was surprising, the researcher said.

"One would think that break-ups would occur more often in families with less equality at home, but our statistics show the opposite," he was quoted as saying by the paper.

The study found that more chores a man does in the home, the higher the divorce rate.

The reasons, Hansen said, lay only partially with the chores themselves.

"Maybe it's sometimes seen as a good thing to have very clear roles with lots of clarity ... Where one person is not stepping on the other's toes," he suggested.

"There could be less quarrels, since you can easily get into squabbles if both have the same roles and one has the feeling that the other is not pulling his or her own weight," he said.

The deeper reasons for the higher divorce rate, he suggested, came from the values of 'modern' couples rather than the chores they shared.

"Modern couples are just that, both in the way they divide up the chores and in their perception of marriage as being less sacred," Hansen said.

"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. They can manage much easier if they divorce," he said.

Norway has a long tradition of gender equality and childrearing is shared equally between mothers and fathers in 70 per cent of cases. But when it comes to housework, women in Norway still account for most of it in seven out of 10 couples, the paper said.

The study emphasised that 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.