Ladies and gentlemen we all know housework can be extremely draining and monotonous, but now it seems completing the household chores can be damaging to your health.
Yes! you read that correctly as rather amazingly studies in Canada have found that gender roles with cleaning and childcare have much more to do with heart attacks than biological factors. The new study, authored by Colleen Norris from the University of Alberta, followed about a thousand men and women under the age of 55 who suffer from heart disease.
They looked at more than two dozen factors – everything from gender, to blood pressure, to salary size, to marital status, to time spent on housework. During the extensive study researchers discovered that women in the study were in worse health a year after their heart disease diagnosis, and they pinpointed several reasons why some women’s health was unable to improve.
Living in a stressful family environment, smaller paychecks, and more time spent doing housework over men were all factors. Men, meanwhile, were less likely to improve if they were the top earner in the household.
Meanwhile statistics found that women did more work around the house compared to their male counterparts. The numbers change based on different scenarios i.e employment and marital status, but in all cases, the report found women worked on chores several more hours per week than men.
According to the report around 20% of men in the US and Canada did housework, compared to 49% of women with the remaining 31% of people saying they hardly did any housework at all. Whilst in the UK, statistics showed that 70% percent of women did most of the household chores compared to 30% of men.
There you have it next time you are feeling exhausted doing the housework it might best to put your feet up and have a well earned rest.