How we’ve put the television ahead of housework

Faye Prior | 2014-04-06 13:17:16

It’s no secret that we have evolved in to a modern lifestyle that puts entertainment and convenience ahead of getting our hands dirty.

But one research group has been surveilling how we’ve spent our time since 1965, and they’ve quantified just how lazy we have become.

Compared to 1965, we now spend on average 12.4 hours less a week on household management, and surprisingly it’s the unemployed that are doing the least household management of all. The researchers even calculated this is terms of energy expenditure, with the unemployed expending 2518 fewer calories per week on housework, with the employed expending 923 calories less. Some of this could be explained by the fact that we’ve doubled our screen based entertainment time (Archer et al., 2013a).

Stay at home mothers did not escape the surveillance either. Somehow they are finding time to reduce their physical activity by 14 hours a week, being completely sedentary for 6 more hours a week, and expending over 1500 calories a week less than mothers did in 1965 (Archer et al., 2013b).

Personally the most shocking fact for me is that people are still currently spending 13 hours a week on cooking and laundry. It seems as though I have some work to do.

Faye Prior (Researcher)

Sources

Archer, E., Shook, R., Thomas, D., Chruch, T., Katzmarzyk, P. et al. (2013a). 45-year trends in women’s use of time and household management energy expenditure. PLoS ONE. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0056620.

Archer, E., Lavie, C., McDonald, S., Thomas, D., Hebert, J. et al. (2013b). Maternal inactivity: 45-year trends in mothers’ use of time. Mayo Clinic Proceedings, 88(12), 1368-77.

Image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/tetrapak/5956902687