Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

DIVORCE

Acknowledge your partner’s housework or prepare for divorce, Swedish study warns

Failing to give your partner fair credit for doing a bigger share of the housework increases the risk of divorce, new research from Sweden suggests.

Published: 14 February 2017 14:00 CET
Acknowledge your partner's housework or prepare for divorce, Swedish study warns
Forget the roses: failing to recognize your partner's share of the housework increases the risk of divorce. Photo: Claudio Bresciani / TT

The study by Stockholm University's Demography Unit shows that household sharing and the perception of it can have a significant impact on relationship satisfaction, even leading to separation if it isn't accurately reflected.

“We looked at heterosexual couples and whether they agree on how they share the household and if that affects their relationship,” Maria Brandén, one of the authors of the research, told The Local.

“In line with other research we find that if couples divide the household tasks unequally, so if the woman does more than the man, it reflects badly on the relationship. Those couples are more likely to dissolve and they have less relationship satisfaction,” she added.

That may not come as a surprise, but of more interest is what the research shows regarding the effects of discrepancies in perception of who does the greater share of the household chores. 

“If the woman reports they share the work unequally and the man reports they share equally, this has an even more negative effect. So, if the man doesn't acknowledge that the woman does more work, it also has a negative effect on the relationship,” Brandén noted.

And the results suggest the same applies for men:

“If the man says he does the most, and the woman says they share equally, men also have higher break-up intentions. So it is kind of the same, but it is less common, because it is not as common that the man does the most housework.”

READ ALSO: Women should lounge on sofa after work, study shows

The research collected nation-wide data from couples in Sweden about their views on their relationships, and along with housework, it addressed other questions like parental leave.

“We have both partners' attitudes on gender equality, on household sharing, both partners' view on parental leave and what they consider a good life. We can do quite a lot of interesting research based on this data in the domain of gender equality in the family,” Brandén explained.

But it was limited in that the majority of the couples who participated were heterosexual:

“Unfortunately we had only very few homosexual couples in the data, so it wouldn't be possible to do a valid analysis with it.”

Sweden has one of the highest divorce rates in the world. So is housework the big problem? And what should couples in the country look to change this Valentine's Day if they want to beat the trend and keep their relationship alive?

“I guess what's more important is to share the housework equally, but if you don't, you should at least give credit to the partner who does the most,” Brandén recommended.

NORWAY

Over one in ten children live in low-income households in Norway

The proportion of children who live in low-income households has increased steadily since 2011, rising to just over one-in-ten, according to a report from Statistics Norway.

Published: 29 March 2021 16:10 CEST
Over one in ten children live in low-income households in Norway
Photo: Annie Spratt on Unsplash

The report found that there a total of 115,000 children belong to households in low-income groups. This is around 11 percent of all children in Norway.

“Studies show that people born into low-income families have in increased risk of being left behind in several areas of living, among other things, growing up in low-income shows a connection with negative health outcomes. It has been shown that young people’s mental health is affected by belonging to a low-income family,” the report states.

In its article on the data, Statistics Norway defines “persistent low income” households as having “under 60 percent of [national] median average [income] over three years”.

Children with an immigrant background have accounted for more than half the children from persistent low-income groups since 2013. This is despite only accounting for 18 percent of all children. Nearly 40 percent of children with immigrant backgrounds belong to low-income households, according to the Statistics Norway figures.

“This has a clear connection with the fact that households with a weak connection to the labour market are exposed to low income,” the report said.

Families with a Syrian background had the highest proportion of low-income households with almost nine-out-of-ten children coming from low-income families. Meanwhile, the largest group of children in number are those with a Somali background with over 11,000 of these children living in low-income households. Children with an Eritrean background saw the largest jump.

READ ALSO: Immigrants in Norway more likely to be affected by loneliness 

The report indicated that the reason behind these groups having large numbers of children belonging to low-income households was because the average number of people in the household with an occupation was less than one between 2017 and 2019.

Those with Lithuanian and Polish backgrounds saw decreases of children in low-income households. Children from these countries, as well as Sri Lanka, India and Bosnia-Herzegovina averaged 1.5 people employed in the household in the same period.  

Single parents are much more likely to be found in low-income groups, as are families with three or more children. 

The areas with the largest municipalities were most exposed to low income. Sarpsborg, in southern Norway, overtook Drammen as the municipality with the largest proportion of low-income children with 19.1 percent.

SHOW COMMENTS