"...as women become more educated than men, even more men may end up out of the work force."

Well... it's possible that this clause could mean something more benign. Assuming that various trends continue and an increasing number of educated women are no longer prevented from entering -- and succeeding in -- high-paying fields like law and medicine and finance, and assuming that the gender pay gap continues to shrink, then more and more married women will become the bread-winners in their families, right?

In that case a rising number of married men will presumably feel less pressure to take a job, any job, simply from the need to support their families, and a rising number of married men will be able to afford to "bum around" like the Dude, knowing that their wives will support them. So more men might well opt out of the work force as women continue to make more money.

At least, that's one way to read the paragraph, and that doesn't seem so unreasonable (although tell me if I'm wrong). But your reading's also very plausible, and if so, you're right, the creepy suggestion that better gender parity in law and medicine will somehow "push" men out of work is both ridiculous and fairly offensive.

In defense of the unemployed men: It would be hard for a man to both lose his job (which is supposed to be a central part of his identity), and also take on a "homemaker" role that other people (family/friends/neighbors) don't really approve of.

When women become unemployed, it's almost too easy for them to fall into a pattern of doing more housework. We could argue that the 6.3 number is too high and that women should feel freer to search for other jobs, start a home business, etc. (all the things that men are expected to do).

I'm not saying it's an excuse for men, nor that their spouses should just be quiet about it.

I guess I just remember being unemployed for a while. As the primary wage earner, I felt a lot of pressure to find a new job as quickly as possible, and to work contract jobs to supplement our income.
So although I increased my household chores somewhat during that time, my husband still did a lot, even after working at his job all day. And I didn't have the social pressure to get a job like a man usually would. (I had it in the opposite direction - i.e. that I should stay home.)

Interestingly, once I knew I had a job, I got a ton of housework done in the two weeks before I started. Then, it really felt like "time off".

My anecdotal evidence:

When my (now ex) husband was out of work, he sat in front of the computer all day looking at porn. He didn't do any housework prior to losing his job and didn't see any reason to do it when I was the sole breadwinner; he wouldn't even pick up the kids from daycare.

Later, I briefly lived with someone who lost his job. He actually did some home repairs while he was unemployed, but mostly he did nothing and complained that my teen and preteen children were "too lazy"...and if they weren't doing housework, he wasn't going to do any either.

When I was out of work, I did more housework than normal, wrote a novel, and took care of the children.

The men in my life appeared to feel that housework was beneath them. I am unlikely to ever live with a man again, unless he pays for a housekeeper.

This is the best argument against marriage I've read all week.

I've heard similar stories to yours, flyinfur. I agree that many men take advantage of the fact that not enough people will judge them if they don't do housework.

The thing is, it's hard to analyze this issue any way but anecdotally. Given the numbers of this study, there's no really good way to find out why it came out the way it did. And it could be a combination of factors.

Well, then let me give you my anecdotal evidence:

I am a man and when I lost my job I simply started to take care of the house and my wife: cleaning, cooking, laundry, grocery shopping and everything else.
It really wasn't that hard to understand that since she was at work all day it was my job to take care of the rest.
I never thought that that was degrading or anything like that, none of my male friend ever found anything wrong with that. Unfortunately I can't say the same about my female friends that were simply making fun of me, so I started to call myself a house-husband, as a form of non-p.c. pleasing defiance of this absurd social rules that we are talking about.

Let's be frank tho: take care of the house,etc. is a lot of work, but 6.3 hours a day!?
That is ridiculous.
Even when I had to vacuum, clean, dust (and I'm a clean freak) do the laundry, pay the bills, get grocery, cook (even prepare dinner and next day breakfast and lunch for my wife when she was on a diet) and take the pets to the vet, all in the same day, it didn't take me that much time. Ever heard of multi-tasking?
And while I was staying at home I went back to school, took cooking classes, studied for the NYC Tour Guide test, played music and produced a couple EPs, went to the gym, read, spent time with my friends during the day, biked around, and did part-time jobs so to have some extra cash.
Now I am going back to work because we want to buy an apartment (after the real estate market crash, and it will crash!) and we need the money, but I will really miss being a stay-at-home husband.

There is a LOT of pressure on men that decide to do what I did, but is our right to stay at home and take care of the house and eventual children. It's a lot of work and a lot of responsibility, that unfortunately most of the time isn't appreciated as it should be, but someone's gotta do it.And when we'll decide to have kids I hope I will be the one staying at home with them.
I am taking care of my wife and my house and I'm proud of it!
So please, stop assuming that if a man is staying at home he "will be able to afford to "bum around" like the Dude, knowing that their wives will support them", because it's honestly quite offensive.

Now I better get going and cut out some coupons before I go to the grocery.

NYCPhish:

According to the figure, you are in the minority. That's what the discussion is about, not that people like you don't exist.

As an aside, I also read the bit about women putting men out of work as being an exacerbating factor, not a primary culprit for millions of out of work men -- and as such, it's actually a little absurd to think otherwise. If you add more high quality job pool applicants to a given field, then some of the people that were already in the pool will end up not getting jobs they would have gotten if those new people had not been added. I don't think there's anything particularly controversial about this. The only situation in which it won't be true is if all the incoming applicants are less hireable than all of the existing applicants.

Did they mention the outsourcing of jobs to developing countries anywhere in the study? And moving manufacturing jobs to these places as well? That has had a huge impact on the number of well-paying jobs. It seems like most of the jobs I see advertised now are in sales or customer service, and those have really shitty pay.

Let's be frank tho: take care of the house,etc. is a lot of work, but 6.3 hours a day!?
That is ridiculous.

I thought it'd be a lot more (one article says American women who don't work outside home spend an average of about 90 hours a week doing housework).

But even 6.3 hours is subject to what Betty Friedan called Parkinson's law of domestic work: when you have nothing else to do, you spend an exorbitant amount of time doing domestic work. If you already think you need to spend a significant amount of time working or doing leisurely activities, you'll then spend much less time doing domestic work.

I have a similar story to flyinfur, but I won't bore everyone with it. Suffice to say I'm divorced for a reason.

And for anyone who thinks 6.3 hours isn't a lot for "housework and child care", may I politely suggest that they don't have very many children? My mother used to take care of all her children AND foster children and it took pretty much all day long to feed, clothe, clean, transport, educate, and otherwise keep us alive and healthy.

Shoot, even just cooking a proper dinner for myself and the hubby used to take a minimum of an hour and thirty to cook, not to mention washing the dishes and taking out the trash afterwards. Does that mean I was obsessed with housework? No. Does it mean I wanted to eat healthily and not live in a roach motel? Yes. Was I working AND going to school full-time at the time? Yes. Did I complain that I wsa doing all the housework and he was sitting on the couch watching TV? Less than you might think.

Am I bitter in retrospect? No, not at all! :D