Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
We could be talking about laundry just as easily as we could be describing decades of research on the household division of labour. Like the laundry that never goes away, research on the gender gap has shown us the same pattern over and over: women still take on more of the domestic tasks than men.
Now, new research led by reserachers at the University of Alberta helps shed some light on why closing that gap is such a challenge. After following 520 Edmontonians over 25 years, the researchers found what they called a gendered pattern of housework starting in their twenties and persisting well into midlife — with parenthood only widening the gap.
Once the patterns are present in a relationship, they tend to stay that way, noted the study, which was recently published in the Journal of Family Psychology.
We tend to have this assumption that relationships are dynamic and constantly evolving as circumstances change, but this study …