Lack Of Household Chores Makes Women Fatter?
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According to recent research, one reason American women are getting fatter is because they spend less time on doing laundry, cooking and other household chores.
It Behoovers You
Did you vacuum today with one of those 20 lbs monsters your grandmother had? No? Then you cheated yourself out of, uh, exercise. That is pretty much what a recent study argues makes today’s American women fatter.
That and spending less time on household chores in general. According to the researchers, when they compared “time-use diaries” of women from 1965 and 2010, the typical stay-at-home woman today spends 13.3 hours per week on household chores and in 1965 it was 25.7 hours. Which they say results in an appreciable difference of 360 kcal less burned per day.
On the other hand, the women of the 60s spend about eight hours per week on watching television, today it’s seventeen (today of course including all those valuable and enriching moments spent on Facebook).
Is Saying This Sexist?
The cry “sexist” is already swelling up around the poor professor who led the study, no matter how much he in the New York Times stresses that it’s not a call for women to do more househould chores. Christa Desir, young adult author and self-declared feminist, is already frothing at the mouth, together with a number of other prolific women’s rights activists.
Uh, it does really sound sexist. At a first glance and if you have the attention span of an ADD sufferer and if logical reasoning isn’t really your forte.
Because, heah, ladies, there is actually little reason to doubt that we do have to spend way less time on household chores than our mothers and grandmothers. And who could argue that we don’t do what we do with superior hardware and it takes a lot less effort? There also is the inconvenient fact that many stay-at-home women didn’t exactly take women’s lib as a call to do more fitness, you know? And, finally, it’s not only the guys who do spreadsheets on a PC the entire day but still eat like they don a hard hat day after day to build a dam called Hoover (ten points for cheap pun).
I bet if you reintroduced the 20 lbs vacuum behemoths from 1965 and sold them as “fat loss miracle that cleans at the same time” you would get takers, too. But that not’s female, that’s human nature for you.
Picture courtesy of “Pete“.
4 Comments
It’s a smaller reason, to be sure. 360kcal doesn’t hold a candle to the increase in caloric intake over the same period due. This is also why American men are getting fatter, too, and they were never much accused of being big housework fiends.
We eat more heavily processed foods and move less. It is a no brainer isn’t it! I don’t think it is a call for women to turn to their previous status but pointing out we aren’t as active. I think you’re right I bet you could sell an old school vacuum cleaner as a weight loss aid! Sad isn’t it!
I remember seeing old predictions from the 1960’s about how women wouldn’t need to do housework because of the new modern technology, and that people would not have to work five days a week because of the new modern technology.
Didn’t turn out as expected, did it??
I personally am still waiting for the flying cars! 🙂