Want better marital intimacy? Share household and parenting roles
A man cares for his child.
What you need to know:
- Career activity is glowingly fruitful to women and participating in household chores and childcare are exceedingly rewarding to men.
- The research affirms that men who have a predominant affinity to their children, score astronomically well in psychological soundness.
A study conducted by the United States National Institute of Mental Health stipulates that a man’s experience as a parent, not as an employee, is the strongest predictor of whether he would experience stress-induced physical adversities.
The study subsequently states that multiple roles are beneficial for both women and men, in relation to their physical, cognitive and relationship wellness.
Career activity is glowingly fruitful to women and participating in household chores and childcare are exceedingly rewarding to men. The research affirms that men who have a predominant affinity to their children, score astronomically well in psychological soundness.
Introspective, marriage and parenting manual Getting to 50/50: How Working Parents Can Have it All by Sharon Meers and Joanna Strober reveals that women love working as much as they love being moms. The authors' enthralling revelations deliver a verdict that ought to trigger a cultural revolution.
A book authored by Sharon Meers and Joanna Strober.
Countless fascinating evidence ascertained by women who work in a broad range of occupations, are a testament to the adjudication of this book. Meers and Strober offer positively illustrated confirmations, indicating how women can democratically craft their own path through an impartially equitable relationship.
There are stark challenges with two careers, but the benefits outstandingly outweigh the reservations. Two careers create more harmony than conflict, debunking complacency and facilitating a healthier family.
Sharing financial, household and childcare responsibilities between parents leads to less-guilty moms, more-involved dads, and essentially happy and healthy children.
A 2009 survey discloses that only nine per cent of people in dual-earning marriages admitted that they share housework, childcare and breadwinning evenly. When men perform half the childcare and housework, it grants women greater choices and flexibility.
The bonus of men executing their share of childcare and housework is not only an appreciation of women, but the prevailing benefits extend to themselves and their children. This inclusive discovery means role sharing is obligatory and eventually leads to a gratifying satisfactory union.
As it’s widely acknowledged, two incomes furnish a family with a safety net. If a husband exits his vocation, his spouse's income blankets him with diversified choices that ease his demoralising occupational digression.
Shielding him from petrification and apprehension, with a poised umbrella of freedom, while he awaits to settle in a profession that meets his objectives.
Staying home, on the other hand, exhausts women, petrifying them with a sense of insecurity and leaves the sole breadwinner with consistent trepidation and less options for career adjustment.
As children grow and become broadly expensive to raise, the pressures on a sole provider accelerate. That breadwinner simultaneously becomes more competent at work and less proficient at home.
Efficiency can, however, be achieved both at work and home, whether you’re called Mom or Dad. For this to manifest, women need to work more so men can work less, but in compensation, men ought to reciprocate their women's effort at home.
In 2006, a survey of 360 married men concluded that men who performed more family chores fared much better sexually. According to the survey, the more satisfied a wife is with division of household duties, the more she recurrently obtains comfort in marital copulation.
Married men reported that when wives were happier with their husband's household work, the frequency of sex escalated. Confounding numerous sceptics, the survey further revealed that the more hours a woman works at her job, the more sex she engages in at home.
The assumption has always been that dual career couples are more harried and exhausted. Which is true in innumerable instances, but fatigue is an inferior factor in who has sex than how couples interact.
The wealth of this research acknowledges that couples who share work, childcare and housework more evenly have three factors on their side.
First, wives are less likely to view their husbands as slackers at home. Secondly, wives find them more appealing because their husbands snuggle their children.
Thirdly, working wives are statistically happier with themselves, subsequently emanating an energy of positive self-confidence, which permeates into a vigour of sexual stamina. Dumping family chores on wives is an anti-aphrodisiac that lays a siege on women and couple therapists identify household conflict as the toxin that predominantly cripples intimacy.
In a 10-year study of young parents, Berkeley psychologists Philip and Carolyn Cowan determined that the greatest interference with what happens in the bedroom comes from what happens between partners outside the bedroom.
When dads are at work and moms are at home, there's an adverse deterrence for misunderstanding that leads to rage.
Therefore, disagreements fester then the sex drive of couples digress, causing their mood for sex to gradually regress. When wives work longer hours while husbands undertake more childcare, wives report greater sexual activity.
Men who report the highest intimacy are also the ones rated as the most sensitive with their children. More sex is a function of more contented wives. Working wives report fewer deviations of feelings than homemakers and they believe their marriages are equitable, non-partisan and egalitarian.
Findings further indicate that the dominant predictor of marital satisfaction for women is how much domestic support her spouse undertakes.
A man’s expressiveness in his share of housework and parenting, subliminally communicates to his woman that he cares about her feelings. This participation makes for a happier wife and her contentment translates into a resolute intimate urge.
The writer is a novelist, Big Brother Africa 2 Kenyan representative and founder of Jeff's Fitness Centre (@jeffbigbrother).
