Equal marriage means less sex

[hinduwoman]

In the best scientific tradition the study begins with a personal anecdote

They aspire to what’s known in the social sciences as an egalitarian marriage, meaning that both spouses work and take care of the house and that the relationship is built on equal power, shared interests and friendship. But the very qualities that lead to greater emotional satisfaction in peer marriages, as one sociologist calls them, may be having an unexpectedly negative impact on these couples’ sex lives.A study called “Egalitarianism, Housework and Sexual Frequency in Marriage,” which appeared in The American Sociological Review last year, surprised many, precisely because it went against the logical assumption that as marriages improve by becoming more equal, the sex in these marriages will improve, too. Instead, it found that when men did certain kinds of chores around the house, couples had less sex. Specifically, if men did all of what the researchers characterized as feminine chores like folding laundry, cooking or vacuuming — the kinds of things many women say they want their husbands to do — then couples had sex 1.5 fewer times per month than those with husbands who did what were considered masculine chores, like taking out the trash or fixing the car. It wasn’t just the frequency that was affected, either — at least for the wives. The more traditional the division of labor, meaning the greater the husband’s share of masculine chores compared with feminine ones, the greater his wife’s reported sexual satisfaction.
Granted, some might view a study like this with skepticism. Correlations don’t establish causation, and especially when it comes to sex, there’s always a risk of reporting bias and selective sampling, not to mention the mood of a subject at the time of the survey. (Was she answering the questions while standing next to a big pile of garbage that hadn’t been taken out?) What’s more, while this study used the most recent nationally representative data that included measures of sexual frequency and a couple’s division of labor, it was drawn from information collected in the 1990s. (Julie Brines, an author of the chores study, explained, however, that many studies on housework since then show that not much has changed in terms of division of labor.) But as a psychotherapist who works with couples, I’ve noticed something similar to the findings. That is, it’s true that being stuck with all the chores rarely tends to make wives desire their husbands. Yet having their partner, say, load the dishwasher — a popular type of marital intervention suggested by self-help books, women’s magazines and therapists alike — doesn’t seem to have much of an effect on their libido, either. Many of my colleagues have observed the same thing: No matter how much sink-scrubbing and grocery-shopping the husband does, no matter how well husband and wife communicate with each other, no matter how sensitive they are to each other’s emotions and work schedules, the wife does not find her husband more sexually exciting, even if she feels both closer to and happier with him.
...
Brines believes the quandary many couples find themselves in comes down to this: “The less gender differentiation, the less sexual desire.
...
The chores study seems to show that women do want their husbands to help out — just in gender-specific ways. Couples in which the husband did plenty of traditionally male chores reported a 17.5 percent higher frequency of sexual intercourse than those in which the husband did none
...
Economic Research shows that if a wife earns more than her husband, the couple are 15 percent less likely to report that their marriage is very happy; 32 percent more likely to report marital troubles in the past year; and 46 percent more likely to have discussed separating in the past year. Similarly, Lynn Prince Cooke found that though sharing breadwinning and household duties decreases the likelihood of divorce, that’s true only up to a point. If a wife earns more than her husband, the risk of divorce increases. (Ok not psuedoscience this bit, I think)
...

On an emotional level, “kindred spirits” sounds lovely. But when it comes to sexual desire, biology seems to prefer difference. Helen Fisher, for one, pointed me to the famous “sweaty T-shirt” experiment, conducted in 1995 by the Swiss researcher Claus Wedekind. He had women sniff the unwashed T-shirts of various men and asked them which scent they were most attracted to. Most women selected the T-shirts of men with genes markedly different from their own in a certain part of the immune system. Other studies confirmed these findings. Presumably this attraction to genetic variation is an evolutionary adaptation to prevent incest in our ancestral environments and improve the survival prospects of offspring. Interestingly, a later experiment found that women partnered with men who had genes similar to their own in this part of the immune system were more likely to be unfaithful; and the more of these genes a woman shared with her partner, the more she was attracted to other men.
There’s an important exception, though. These findings didn’t apply when women were on the birth-control pill: They responded differently to the T-shirt test by selecting partners who had similar immunity and were less “other.” One study even suggested that when “a woman chooses her partner while she is on the pill and then comes off it to have a child, her hormone-driven preferences change, and she may find she is married to the wrong kind of man.”

 

[Petrel]

So what? It wouldn't hurt us to cool off a bit and think about something else. Maybe, when men have learned to identify chores as shit that just needs doing, rather than "woman's work" and "man's work", and stop feeling inadequate if their mate brings home more money, their sexual performance won't be negatively affected by having washed their own shirts or fed their own kids.

 

[Juma]

What is sexy is probably very much a social construcct: we think someone is sexy because we beleive he/she is desired by others.
So if there is a common view that macho men is more sexy than helping men then you may get this result.

 

[Bronzeage]

So what? It wouldn't hurt us to cool off a bit and think about something else. Maybe, when men have learned to identify chores as shit that just needs doing, rather than "woman's work" and "man's work", and stop feeling inadequate if their mate brings home more money, their sexual performance won't be negatively affected by having washed their own shirts or fed their own kids.

That's crazy talk.

I've been married to various women most of my adult life. It was never a problem for me to do a share of the housework. If I can operate a Sun engine analyzer, I can certainly figure out a washing machine. It's a simple fact of modern life that most women work outside the home and still do most of the house keeping. This leaves little time for the simple rest and recuperation which allows for pleasurable and stress free sex. It's no surprize that a man who does most of the housework has less sex. If he had a job outside the home which occupied 80 hours of his life, every week, he's not doing anything in bed but sleeping.

As for this part:

Many of my colleagues have observed the same thing: No matter how much sink-scrubbing and grocery-shopping the husband does, no matter how well husband and wife communicate with each other, no matter how sensitive they are to each other’s emotions and work schedules, the wife does not find her husband more sexually exciting, even if she feels both closer to and happier with him.

This is based on an adolescent attitude toward sex, formed when hormones made every smile, giggle and touch is electric. Those hormones don't last forever and when their levels decline, people are too quick to blame it on familiarity. The old level of excitement can be imitated (but not duplicated) by a new and novel partner, but the effect is short lived. Those who never learn to move from the excitement of the new to the comfort of the familiar are doomed to either a series of short lived relationships, or to simply be alone.

 

[Keith&Co.]

I've only ever had the one wife. But i've known her for 30 years.

I've outranked her and been outranked by her (she made 2nd second, but she made 1st first). I've made more money than her and less.
We've lived together in two countries and been married in four states.
I've done some of the cooking, all of the cooking, none of the cooking and taught the kids to cook.
I've done some of the laundry and most of the laundry, and from the very beginning did certain parts of the laundry because she can't iron crackerjacks to save her life.

In all of that, the only thing i've noticed that directly affected sex was how many people in the house might interrupt us.
Being at our own home, our own bed, with 6-month old twins, sex had a probability similar to sleeping in my mother's sewing room or her mother's spare room that had a hanging towel as a door.

 

[doubtingt]

The NYT article is useless puff, but the actual published research study it refers to is better than I would have expected. They control for a whole bunch of potential confounding factors, including age, number of young kids in the house, hours working outside the home for both partners, religion, church attendance, education, income, wife's share of income, ideology about gender roles, marital happiness, hours spend home alone with each other, total hours spent on housework (different for % of housework by man which is the main predictor).
Even after all these factors were controlled, men who did more of the traditional household chores had significantly less sex with their wives, and their wives were less sexually satisfied.

What is sexy is probably very much a social construcct: we think someone is sexy because we beleive he/she is desired by others.
So if there is a common view that macho men is more sexy than helping men then you may get this result.

They sort of deal with that too. Not only do the control for women's beliefs about proper gender roles, but they test to see whether those beliefs interact with housework, meaning they test whether the observed result is mostly due to the views of women who accept traditional gender roles. Gender role beliefs don't have any effect on the results.

It is still quite possible that doing housework is just a non-causal correlated with the real factor. They do control for many factors, but not directly for the type of men these are that do more or less housework. These might be high testosterone manly men who women just find more sexually appealing, including the one's who wind up marrying a different type of man. OR perhaps women with high sex drive are more likely to marry such men. Thus, the fact that these men do less female traditional housework is just an incidental byproduct of the type of men they are. If they started doing more housework, it wouldn't harm their sex life, and if men who do alot of housework did less it wouldn't increase their sexlife.

 

[Keith&Co.]

I mwnrioned this to Mrs. &Co. She says it sounds likely to be true.

Her idea is that if everyone in the room is there to make partner A happy, partner A will be happy. When it's B's turn, however often that happens, then everyone is there to make B happy.

If everyone is too busy making sure the other is happy, then no one's working to make sure THEY are happy. No one's willing to demand sex, or demand a certain act, or say 'gosh that wasn't satisfying.' Or they'll both decide the other doesn't appear to be in the mood so they won't pressure for sex. Which may mean they won't even suggest that, hey, maybe we could get into each other's vicinity and wiggle?

So i said maybe i should slap her around tonight.

She raised one eyebrow.

"Yeah. I hit you, you kick me into the corner, and start hitting me like a Catholic Schoolboy caught telling Virgin Mary jokes. Then, when I finish begging for mercy, it's clear to both of us who's in charge, and whose turn it is to be serviced, and who gets to decide what the services will include."

She liked the 'kick me into the corner' part. Jury's not in on the rest, just yet.

 

[Bronzeage]

If "less sex" means both enjoy their sex a little more, I don't see a problem with this.

 

[Elixir]

All of the above.
30+ yrs married, and conformance to traditional work roles has never been a feature.

 

[ApostateAbe]

In the best scientific tradition the study begins with a personal anecdote

I didn't see a personal anecdote in that study. Maybe I overlooked it?

I don't know if this is good science. Correlation is not always causation. But, the conclusion does follow from my general perspective of human sexuality. Women are more likely to control the number of times a couple has sex. Women are not sexually attracted to equal men. Women are sexually attracted to more powerful men. Men, in turn, are more sexually attracted to weaker women, not equal women. This dynamic is ancestral and biologically innate. It explains the sexual dimorphism, with men being physically larger than women. Darwin also used it to explain human intelligence, in his book Descent of Man. The most powerful men tend to be more intelligent. This hypothesis is generally accepted by evolutionary biologists today.

If a study's conclusion disagrees with what you believe, that does not make it pseudoscience. It is pseudoscience if the methods are bad, though I prefer to avoid using the phrase "pseudoscience" generally. Yeah, I don't like the name of this subforum. There is good science and bad science, not science and pseudoscience.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

A thought here:

In a situation where one party dominates the marriage I would expect them to dominate the bedroom--sex will generally happen if they want it to.

In a situation of equality the desires of both will be more important--sex will generally only happen if they both want it.

 

[ApostateAbe]

A thought here:

In a situation where one party dominates the marriage I would expect them to dominate the bedroom--sex will generally happen if they want it to.

In a situation of equality the desires of both will be more important--sex will generally only happen if they both want it.

The hypothesis can be tested by comparing marriages where the woman dominates the man with marriages where the man dominates the woman. I expect the latter has more sex than the former.

 

[bilby]

It seems pretty clear from this study that in marriages where there is less sex, the man tends to compensate for the reduced intimacy in the bedroom by being more useful around the house.

Well, maybe not, but that is at least as valid a conclusion as the one everyone is chattering about.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

A thought here:

In a situation where one party dominates the marriage I would expect them to dominate the bedroom--sex will generally happen if they want it to.

In a situation of equality the desires of both will be more important--sex will generally only happen if they both want it.

The hypothesis can be tested by comparing marriages where the woman dominates the man with marriages where the man dominates the woman. I expect the latter has more sex than the former.

I would expect the latter would have more but I'm saying the marriage where both must want it would have less than either.

 

[exodiasrightleg]

Women are more likely to control the number of times a couple has sex. Women are not sexually attracted to equal men. Women are sexually attracted to more powerful men. Men, in turn, are more sexually attracted to weaker women, not equal women. This dynamic is ancestral and biologically innate. It explains the sexual dimorphism, with men being physically larger than women. Darwin also used it to explain human intelligence, in his book Descent of Man.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz SNORE

Oh, I'm sorry, am I supposed to give a meaningful answer to this load of clichés?

The most powerful men tend to be more intelligent. This hypothesis is generally accepted by evolutionary biologists today.

[citation very much needed]

 

[Jokodo]

Correlation ≠ causation!

And if it's causation, we don't know the direction. All we have here is a significant correlation between men doing more "feminine" chores and less sex.

A plausible scenario with inverted causality:

A significant minority of men who do more "feminine" chores do so in an attempt (conscious or otherwise) to "earn" more sex, after being unsatisfied with their sex life for other reasons. Doing so might even improve their sex lives and we'd still get this result as long as it doesn't improve their sex life enough to make up for the fact that their relationships were less sexually satisfying to start with.

 

[ApostateAbe]

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz SNORE

Oh, I'm sorry, am I supposed to give a meaningful answer to this load of clichés?

The most powerful men tend to be more intelligent. This hypothesis is generally accepted by evolutionary biologists today.

[citation very much needed]

Sometimes, clichés make the most sense. Not that you should always believe clichés, but obvious explanations often become obvious by following from the evidence most directly. The subtle creative explanations tend to be more suspect, in my opinion.

Citation for the claim that powerful men tend to be more intelligent:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289607000219

Citation for the claim that this hypothesis is generally accepted by evolutionary biologists today:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ftp://ftp.repec.org/RePEc/els/esrcls/sex.pdf

 

[ApostateAbe]

A thought here:

In a situation where one party dominates the marriage I would expect them to dominate the bedroom--sex will generally happen if they want it to.

In a situation of equality the desires of both will be more important--sex will generally only happen if they both want it.

The hypothesis can be tested by comparing marriages where the woman dominates the man with marriages where the man dominates the woman. I expect the latter has more sex than the former.

I would expect the latter would have more but I'm saying the marriage where both must want it would have less than either.

Yes, good point.

 

[Jokodo]

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz SNORE

Oh, I'm sorry, am I supposed to give a meaningful answer to this load of clichés?

The most powerful men tend to be more intelligent. This hypothesis is generally accepted by evolutionary biologists today.

[citation very much needed]

Sometimes, clichés make the most sense. Not that you should always believe clichés, but obvious explanations often become obvious by following from the evidence most directly. The subtle creative explanations tend to be more suspect, in my opinion.

Citation for the claim that powerful men tend to be more intelligent:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289607000219

That's an article about wealthier people tending to be more intelligent. Best as I can tell, it doesn't even attempt to correlate intelligence and being "powerful" in the sense of manly, sexually attractive physique (ETA: or for that matter, dominant behaviours).

Citation for the claim that this hypothesis is generally accepted by evolutionary biologists today:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ftp://ftp.repec.org/RePEc/els/esrcls/sex.pdf

Again, as far as I can tell this paper talks about how intelligence may have partially evolved through sexual selection. It does not, best as I can tell, posit that intelligence is correlated with other sexually selected features.

Of course, I may have skipped that half sentence. Can you point us to the section and subsection you're referring to?

 

[ApostateAbe]

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz SNORE

Oh, I'm sorry, am I supposed to give a meaningful answer to this load of clichés?

The most powerful men tend to be more intelligent. This hypothesis is generally accepted by evolutionary biologists today.

[citation very much needed]

Sometimes, clichés make the most sense. Not that you should always believe clichés, but obvious explanations often become obvious by following from the evidence most directly. The subtle creative explanations tend to be more suspect, in my opinion.

Citation for the claim that powerful men tend to be more intelligent:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289607000219

That's an article about wealthier people tending to be more intelligent. Best as I can tell, it doesn't even attempt to correlate intelligence and being "powerful" in the sense of manly, sexually attractive physique.

The article claims a correlation between income and IQ, but no correlation between wealth and IQ. The physique is a different expression of power.

But, you can find a correlation between height and IQ as reviewed by this post:

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog...taller-people-more-intelligent-shorter-people

And, you can likewise find a correlation between beauty and IQ as reviewed by this post:

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog.../beautiful-people-really-are-more-intelligent

Citation for the claim that this hypothesis is generally accepted by evolutionary biologists today:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ftp://ftp.repec.org/RePEc/els/esrcls/sex.pdf

Again, as far as I can tell this paper talks about how intelligence may have partially evolved through sexual selection. It does not, best as I can tell, posit that intelligence is correlated with other sexually selected features.

Of course, I may have skipped that half sentence. Can you point us to the section and subsection you're referring to?

Yeah, neither am I aware whether or not the article claims intelligence is correlated with other sexually selected features.