Sorry I haven’t written much lately. I’ve been busy replacing my plugs (on my car, not my head), cutting firewood, building a deck, painting the garage, cutting brush, shooting, stuffing, and mounting a moose, digging a moat around the house and filling it with piranhas and water moccasins. In fact, I’ve been doing darn near everything around the house except cooking and cleaning. Why? Because of this new study that says hubbies who cook and clean get less sex!
This research, which I sure hope us taxpayers ain’t paying for, is out in the American Sociological Review. The gist of it is that our sex-role mindset apparently hasn’t changed since Ward and June were in first-run. It found that “Households with a more traditional gender division of labor report higher sexual frequency than households with less traditional gender divisions of labor.” For couples in which men did no traditionally female housework, sexual frequency was 4.8 times per month. For those in which men did all of that kind of housework, the frequency was 3.2 times per month.
Okay, first of all, could somebody explain the .8 and .2 times a month? Maybe .8 is when you skip foreplay (which for some guys would qualify as a 10), and .2 is when you just get your socks off. (I said SOCKS, people, not rocks. Get your minds outta the gutter). And second, why is this an either-or choice? There are lots of things I wish I could do better, and fixing cars is definitely one, but preparing good meals is another.
I just can’t buy the cause-and-effect relationship. If this is true, then a guy who cleaned out the basement, is covered in sweat, cobwebs, and mold and probably just guzzled a couple of beers right afterward is a bigger hottie than one who laid out a three-course dinner AND cleaned up the kitchen. Maybe the 3.2 men are married to women with extremely demanding jobs, who just might not have the time or energy for a lot of bouncy-bouncy. And I’ll bet the 4.8 fellas are exaggerating a trifle, because us guys exaggerate about everything. Come to think of it, no matter how good your survey methods are, how many of us will ever be totally honest about this subject? Especially when we’re talking about our spouses, not just casual hookups or Lennay Kekua.
This reminds me of that study years ago that claimed a woman of a certain age had a better chance of being killed by a terrorist than getting married. One of the few media outlets that didn’t blare it all over the place was the newsroom where I was working at the time, and where a woman of that age was in charge. From us, at least, it got the properly skeptical review and never got on our airwaves. Would that it were true with this turkey. (Did I say turkey? I promise, hon, I’m not about to start cooking!).
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