
Does a More Equal Marriage Mean Less Sex? - kevinmchugh
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/09/magazine/does-a-more-equal-marriage-mean-less-sex.html?_r=0
======
__pThrow
Original paper here:
[http://www.asanet.org/journals/ASR/Feb13ASRFeature.pdf](http://www.asanet.org/journals/ASR/Feb13ASRFeature.pdf)

Science Daily writeup:
[http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130130082258.ht...](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130130082258.htm)

Slate:
[http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/03/28/guys_who_do_...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/03/28/guys_who_do_housework_get_less_sex.html)

Write from U of Washington where the research was done here:
[http://www.washington.edu/news/2013/01/29/more-sex-for-
marri...](http://www.washington.edu/news/2013/01/29/more-sex-for-married-
couples-with-traditional-divisions-of-housework/)

 _Married men and women who divide household chores in traditional ways report
having more sex than couples who share so-called men’s and women’s work,
according to a new study co-authored by sociologists at the University of
Washington._

 _Other studies have found that husbands got more sex if they did more
housework, implying that sex was in exchange for housework. But those studies
did not factor in what types of chores the husbands were doing._

 _The new study, published in the February issue of the journal American
Sociological Review, shows that sex isn’t a bargaining chip. Instead, sex is
linked to what types of chores each spouse completes._

 _Couples who follow traditional gender roles around the house – wives doing
the cooking, cleaning and shopping; men doing yard work, paying bills and auto
maintenance – reported greater sexual frequency._

 _“The results show that gender still organizes quite a bit of everyday life
in marriage,” said co-author Julie Brines, a UW associate professor of
sociology. “In particular, it seems that the gender identities husbands and
wives express through the chores they do also help structure sexual
behavior.”_

------
guard-of-terra
Taking out the trash as a manly activity made me giggle.

To be serious, I see the problem like this: we don't understand what should
men be like anymore.

We have at least two viable role models for women: girly woman and equal
breadwinner woman. Both attractive as you can see. But we have no viable role
model for men. Egalitarian man loses sexual attractivity and "manly man" is a
dick who doesn't do his fair share.

As a programmer I spend the whole day sitting in a chair and clicking my mouse
(keyboard tapping from time to time). Is that manly? I don't know.

~~~
aaronem
> "manly man" is a dick who doesn't do his fair share

Oh? My wife, back when I had one, never seemed interested in an egalitarian
split for chores like, say, replacing the car's serpentine belt and tensioner,
or sorting out the electrical fault that'd stopped the taillights working --
or, for that matter, taking out the garbage. (Which, incidentally, I gather
from empirical evidence _does_ count as a "manly activity", presumably because
garbage is often heavy and occasionally malodorous.) So also for yardwork and
most repairs to the domicile; in general, if the job seemed likely to involve
sweating, swearing, or a risk of ending up bleeding, the job was mine, and the
egalitarian split business applied only to the rest.

Which got galling after a while; I don't mind mowing, weeding, edging, and
sweeping, or spending six hours getting filthy with my arm jammed to the elbow
up the ass end of a car engine, but when I've been doing that all day, and
have finally finished up and got a shower, a beer, and a piece of the couch, I
don't _give_ a damn if it's my turn to cook -- and nor should I, because I've
_done_ my fair share.

> We have at least two viable role models for women: girly woman and equal
> breadwinner woman.

I'm not sure about that. I've known a lot of people whose marriages involved
what you call an "equal breadwinner woman". Most of those marriages have
failed. While I've known rather fewer people whose marriages have involved men
and women who more closely followed what the modern age pleases itself to
regard as outdated, patriarchal, oppressively stereotypical gender roles,
almost all of those whom I do know are still married, and indeed many have
been for longer than I've been alive. Causation is always a tricky beast to
corner, but at the very least there's a strong correlation there, and I tend
to think there's a reason for that.

(I'd also note, parenthetically, that the men I've known who've been married
to your "equal breadwinner women" haven't been men I've found particularly
worthy of respect, nor for the most part have I had the impression they had
much respect for themselves. The women themselves tend to be lovely people, if
lonely, but their husbands have been no prizes, which does a lot to explain
the high divorce rate I've observed among them.)

> As a programmer I spend the whole day sitting in a chair and clicking my
> mouse (keyboard tapping from time to time). Is that manly? I don't know.

No, it's not, and I say that as one who does likewise. (Except mostly with his
hands on the keyboard -- what kind of programming do you do that you touch it
only rarely?)

~~~
guard-of-terra
"replacing the car's serpentine belt and tensioner, or sorting out the
electrical fault that'd stopped the taillights working"

[I don't have a car.] The problem is, once your home is up and running there's
not much for you to do, but "unmanly" house chores form a never-ending stream.

"Men work" scale (do it good once, it's good for a few years), but "women
work" doesn't (wipe the floor today, still needs to be done again in a week).

"the men I've known who've been married to your "equal breadwinner women"
haven't been men I've found particularly worthy of respect"

Well, most people are a kludge. We tend to have higher expectations for men
for some reason, but at the end of day we are still human, flawed and all.
Should find a solution that works for almost everybody.

"what kind of programming do you do that you touch it only rarely?"

The one when you "fly" your product most of the time as a pilot and only
occasionally modify it as a developer.

------
shittyanalogy
I'm being nitpicky, but these are the exact moments when statistical findings
get turned into forced conclusions:

 _" The risk of divorce is lowest when the husband does 40 percent of the
housework and the wife earns 40 percent of the income."_

It's not that some _risk_ is lowest, it's that, of the divorces studied,
apparently regardless of demographic, there _seems_ to be a statistically
significant smaller amount of divorces coming from that particular
configuration of earning and housework.

Emotional write ups, of everyone's favorite subject, like this are destined to
be rife with opinion and forced conclusion. That entire write up, IMHO, is
just as valid as answering the question with the word "no."

Like everything else in life you need to ask yourself, "does my sex life
suck?" and then "What can I do to change it?" If the answer is, "Tell my wife
to make less money and do more chores" then go for it.

~~~
hedgew
How much money would you bet on the answer to the question being "no"?

Based on the evidence we have, couples in more equal relationships seem to
have less sex and are less satisfied with the sex.

This is a conclusion based on statistical inferences made from sample
containing about 4,500 marriages. It is much more valid than a "no", even if
it is imperfect.

If we return to our bet, how would you propose that we resolve the answer? How
large would the sample size have to be for you to be satisfied?

~~~
shittyanalogy
"How much money would you bet?" Is not a good way to start a healthy argument.

Opinions and statistical molding are not conclusions in this sense. They are
just opinions. There is no possible way to "resolve the answer". Every every
person is an individual, relationship is different, and they change over time.
There's absolutely no way to prove or conclude that equality in home and
monetary responsibility are emasculating men and ruining sex lives. People
should be evaluating their sex lives on an individual basis, not blaming them
on any broad "conclusion" posted to the internet based on poor statistical
inference.

------
Dirlewanger
Last sentence is great: "“It’s a tall order for one person to be your partner
in Management Inc., your best friend and passionate lover. There’s a certain
part of you that with this partner will not be fulfilled. You deal with that
loss. It’s a paradox to be lived with, not solved.”"

It's why I've only recently "got" open relationships. A couple years ago I
would have vehemently derided them as an excuse for not being able to keep it
in one's pants and inability to commit to a relationship. But now I see that
no one person has never been and will never be "everything" to any one
person...and if two people who openly understand this and have a relationship,
then it will only strengthen their love for one another because they realize
that while they may not be everything to each other, both are getting the most
out of life while still having an anchor at home.

~~~
sliverstorm
I guess you could see open relationships as one resolution to that trinity.
The others then being:

\- greater reliance on same-sex friend groups (spouse lacking as a best
friend)

\- Keeping aspects like finances split, _or_ surrendering management of this
or that aspect completely to one or the other partner

All three resolutions have been a part of successful relationships, though not
necessarily together.

------
smallerize
_couples had sex 1.5 fewer times per month_

Could someone check the paper and see what was really meant here? I'm guessing
people aren't having negative sex.

~~~
sanj
You might be overthinking this.

MachoMan and GirlyWoman had sex 28 times per month

EgalitarianMan and EqualityWoman had sex 26.5 times per month.

(numbers and names made up.)

~~~
BlackDeath3
And if x < 1.5, it was a subtle joke.

------
lexcorvus
_Homo sapiens_ has evolved from a long line of primates exhibiting significant
sexual dimorphism. [1] Attempts to eliminate spontaneously emerging gender
roles are thus fighting millions of years of evolution. This doesn't
necessarily make such attempts bad—the strategy of forced copulation is also
millions of years old [2], and I'm sure we agree it should be suppressed with
vigor—but it does suggest that denying the reality of sex differences might
cause unnecessary suffering.

[1]:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_dimorphism#Humans](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_dimorphism#Humans)

[2]:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_coercion](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_coercion)

~~~
dalke
Quoting directly from the first line of your [1]: "Sexual dimorphism in humans
has long been a subject of much controversy, especially when extended beyond
physical differences to mental ability and psychological gender."

That seems directly counter to your statement that gender roles are based on
any sort of clear evolutionary basis across millions of years. Upon what do
you base your conclusions?

Certainly the studies I've heard about haven't identified a strong sexual
dimorphism in humans, outside of physical differences.

For a recent lay presentation on the issue, covering some of the history of
studies trying to identify sexual dimorphism in humans, see:
[http://freethoughtblogs.com/lousycanuck/2014/02/03/ftbcon2-e...](http://freethoughtblogs.com/lousycanuck/2014/02/03/ftbcon2-evidence-
based-feminism-w-full-transcript/)

~~~
lexcorvus
You raise a good point. Wikipedia's policy of NPOV (neutral point-of-view)
effectively means "mainstream"; while I grant that "controversy" on this
subject exists in the mainstream, I believe in this case the mainstream is
unhinged from reality. Thus, on this point, so is Wikipedia. [1]

Given the dramatically different reproductive incentives for women (one egg
per month for ~25 years, 9 months of pregnancy plus lactation, etc.) and men
(millions of sperm per week and potentially no more than a few minutes'
commitment), biologically determined cognitive and behavioral differences are
obviously the _null hypothesis_. In other words, the burden of proof is on
those who claim that women and men _don 't_ exhibit cognitive dimorphism. Does
this strike you as the "mainstream" view? For example, there are many who
claim (or, much more often, merely imply) that women and men must on average
be equally well-suited to engineering. Are such people routinely called out by
NPR and the New York Times to produce evidence to support their position? Um,
no. So, we can see that the mainstream is in error: even if it turns that
there is such evidence, the mainstream doesn't generally demand it. (Indeed,
those who _do_ demand it risk censure for their beliefs.)

A survey of different cultures around the world tends to confirm the null
hypothesis: a belief that women and men have different natures is a human
universal. [2] For a rigorous account of the positive case that women and men
differ in their cognitive and behavioral characteristics, I can recommend _The
Blank Slate_ by Steven Pinker. [3] If you're short on time, see his TED talk
for a quick overview. [4]

[1]: If creationism were mainstream, Wikipedia would claim a "controversy"
over evolution. Indeed, many creationists make just such a claim. This doesn't
make them right.

[2]: [http://humanuniversals.com/human-
universals/](http://humanuniversals.com/human-universals/)

[3]: [http://www.amazon.com/The-Blank-Slate-Modern-
Denial/dp/01420...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Blank-Slate-Modern-
Denial/dp/0142003344)

[4]:
[http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_chalks_it_up_to_the_b...](http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_chalks_it_up_to_the_blank_slate.html)

~~~
dalke
I'm not the one who started by pointing to Wikipedia. ;)

"the burden of proof is on those who claim that women and men don't exhibit
cognitive dimorphism"

As for example Maccoby, Eleanor Emmons, and Carol Nagy Jacklin, eds. The
psychology of sex differences. Vol. 1. Stanford University Press, 1974? And
the additional analysis by Janet Hyde in papers like "How large are cognitive
gender differences? A meta-analysis using! w² and d.." American Psychologist
36.8 (1981): 892? (Plus more recent work. Those citations come from the full
paper behind the link I posted previously, which lists many more references.)

There's a century of work on this topic. Some say there are differences,
others say there aren't any. The ones that say there are differences don't
seem to be that reproducible. There's publication bias as well - someone finds
a difference, but when the test is repeated the difference decreases or even
disappears. This is expected for the reasons behind
[http://xkcd.com/882/](http://xkcd.com/882/) and elaborated in that 1974
reference as:

> We shall return now to the importance of the null hypothesis - to point with
> some alarm to the tendency for isolated positive findings to sweep through
> the literature, while findings of no difference, or even later findings of
> opposite results, are ignored. Studies with nonreplicable[sic] positive
> findings are reprinted in books of readings, cited in textbooks, and used to
> buttress theories about the nature of the development of sex typing.

along with a quote about their hypothesis for why beliefs about cognitive sex
persist:

> An ancient truth is worth stating here: if a generalization about a group of
> people is believed, whenever a member of that group behaves in the expected
> way the observer notes it and his belief is confirmed and strengthened; when
> a member of the group behaves in a way that is not consistent with the
> observer's expectations, the instance is likely to pass unnoticed, and the
> observer's generalized belief is protected from disconfirmation. We believe
> that this well-documented process occurs continually in relation to the
> expected and perceived behavior of males and females, and results in the
> perpetuation of myths that would otherwise die out under the impact of
> negative evidence.

Or there's papers like Feingold, Alan. "Cognitive gender differences are
disappearing." American Psychologist 43.2 (1988): 95. If cognitive gender
differences are innate, and easily measurable, then there wouldn't be a change
over time. That there's a decrease says they are either not innate or not
easily measurable.

You wrote: "So, we can see that the mainstream is in error: even if it turns
that there is such evidence, the mainstream doesn't generally demand it.
(Indeed, those who do demand it risk censure for their beliefs.)"

Are you kidding me? There's a bajillion people who say there's evidence for
cognitive sex differences. Here's one citation:

> '"Educational systems could be improved by acknowledging that, in general,
> boys and girls are different," said David Geary, MU professor of
> psychological science. "For example, in trying to close the sex gap in math
> scores, the reading gap was left behind. ..."' Quote from
> [http://munews.missouri.edu/news-
> releases/2013/0313-internati...](http://munews.missouri.edu/news-
> releases/2013/0313-international-gender-difference-in-math-and-reading-
> scores-persists-regardless-of-nations%E2%80%99-gender-equality-levels-says-
> mu-psychologist/) . Author's home page
> [http://psychology.missouri.edu/gearyd](http://psychology.missouri.edu/gearyd)
> .

How has this person been censured?

The paper is freely available. It points out that there are measured sex
differences, and in hypothesis #3 that it might be "biological in origin, see
pp.291–294, pp.411–412 of [10]", but "At this point, we have no definite
answer to what can explain the correlation, which means that it requires
further study."

And that's the issue - there is evidence of differences, but there isn't
strong or significant evidence that those differences are biological in
nature. But it's very easy to see the difference and assume it must be
biological.

I see that you reference popular science books and lectures as basis for your
decisions. Moreover, all of those resources came from a single person. That is
not rigorous. Pinker could be misinterpreting the data and you wouldn't know.

Where is the primary data? How are the experiments done? What confounding
effects might be in the data? How reproducible is it? Can you point me to some
of the peer reviewed literature?

I looked at the 'human universals' link. It immediately made me distrustful,
since the first one is "environment, adjustments to". _All life_ adjusts to
the environment, so this isn't particularly special for humans. It's like
saying that eating and defecating are human universals; while true, I note
they aren't on the list.

But there's easily things in there which are not universal. My cousin doesn't
prefer sweets. There are people who feel no pain (congenital analgesia). Those
without thumbs/hands/arms have no thumb sucking. Yet those people are
obviously human. More likely, these "universals" are not actually universal,
no?

Or take "males dominate public/political realm"? How universal can that be
given that Andorra and Rwanda have respectively 50% and 56% female
parliamentarians? If there ever is a country with a majority of female
politicians across all levels, would this mean Pinker's universals hypothesis
is completely false? Or would the list be adjusted to fit whatever is the
current conditions?

~~~
lexcorvus
I appreciate your detailed response. As you might guess, I find many points of
disagreement, but rather than belabor the matter with an enumeration of such
points, let me just note that my comment wasn't a dissertation, so accusations
of a lack of rigor are misplaced. In particular, my purpose in citing Pinker
was to point you to an accessible introduction to the subject, not to do a
comprehensive literature review. Moreover, what you dismiss as a "popular
science book" has hundreds of footnotes to refereed publications. Take a look
at it—you might be surprised at what you find.

~~~
dalke
As you yourself have implied, creationist books also have 'hundreds of
footnotes to refereed publications.' ;)

I have a hard time trusting Pinker's views, or most of the work of
evolutionary psychology. They in general do not seem to understand evolution.
That is, they seem to think that everything is an adaptive result of specific
evolution, and don't consider the idea that some mechanisms are neutral with
respect to selection. I also believe they have make conclusions based on
insufficient evidence.

My own experiments with genetic algorithms show just how much crap there can
be, which has nothing to do with evolutionary fitness. But I at best dabble in
evolutionary biology (my own work is related to small-molecule chemistry, and
my training is in structural biophysics, so only tangentially related to
evolution).

Instead, see
[http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/07/28/tackling-p...](http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/07/28/tackling-
pinkers-defense-of-evolutionary-psychology/) and
[http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/07/15/when-in-
do...](http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/07/15/when-in-doubt-just-
question-the-motives-of-evolutionary-psychology-critics/) for the comments of
an evolutionary biologist commenting on evolutionary psychology, and on Pinker
in specific.

"Take a look at [them]—you might be surprised at what you find." ;)

Quoting from the latter:

> Have I ever said that we shouldn’t study gender or racial differences? No.
> We know there are going to be differences. The catch is that they have to be
> studied very, very well, with rigor and careful analysis, because they are
> socially loaded and because science has a deeply deplorable history of using
> poor methods to reach bad conclusions that are used as ideological props for
> the status quo.

The first of those links has 654 comments, with all sorts of viewpoints ...
and a number of references, like from #516:

> In this paper, we use meta-analysis to analyze gender differences in recent
> studies of mathematics performance. First, we meta-analyzed data from 242
> studies published between 1990 and 2007, representing the testing of
> 1,286,350 people. Overall, d = .05, indicating no gender difference, and VR
> = 1.08, indicating nearly equal male and female variances. Second, we
> analyzed data from large data sets based on probability sampling of U.S.
> adolescents over the past 20 years: the NLSY, NELS88, LSAY, and NAEP. Effect
> sizes for the gender difference ranged between −0.15 and +0.22. Variance
> ratios ranged from 0.88 to 1.34. Taken together these findings support the
> view that males and females perform similarly in mathematics.

The paper is online for free at
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3057475/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3057475/)
, and it highlights the difficulties of doing this research:

> These stereotypes are of concern for several reasons. First, in the language
> of cognitive social learning theory, stereotypes can influence competency
> beliefs or self-efficacy; correlational research does indeed show that
> parents' and teachers' stereotypes about gender and mathematics predict
> children's perceptions of their own abilities, even with actual mathematics
> performance controlled (Bouchey & Harter, 2005; Frome & Eccles, 1998;
> Keller, 2001; Tiedemann, 2000). ... A second concern is that stereotypes can
> have a deleterious effect on actual performance. Stereotype threat effects
> (Steele, 1997; Steele & Aronson, 1995) have been found for women in
> mathematics. ... Stereotypes play a role in policy decisions as well as
> personal decision-making. For example, schools and states may base decisions
> to offer single-sex mathematics classes on the belief that these gender
> differences exist (Arms, 2007).

Note that these two confounding cultural effects are not genetic, and
seemingly much stronger than any biologically-based difference which might
exist.

------
joeblubaugh
This is a Hacker News submission? Yeesh.

~~~
brandonbloom
This gratifies my intellectual curiosity [1] in a way that another article
about some boring JavaScript framework or crazy CSS quirk could never do.

[1]:
[http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
twelve40
> woman in her early 40s said that it wasn’t until she came across some porn
> scenes her husband had viewed online that she felt comfortable telling him
> about her fantasies, which happened to be very similar to what she found.
> She thought he’d be thrilled, but although he enacted the scenes with her,
> she was surprised by his lack of enthusiasm.

I'm sorry. There is most likely a much simpler explanation for this, and it
has nothing to do with manly chores. The fact that the esteemed author fails
to even mention it undermines everything else.

------
j2kun
> 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.

1.5 times fewer per month... is that statistically significant?

------
facepalm
The real purpose of that article is to establish that "number of household
chores shared" is a meaningful measure of equality in a marriage. The sex bit
is just the transmission vector for the feminist meme.

------
sdegutis
The concept of "gender" as social/cultural difference between the two sexes is
being killed off by society. It's been happening slowly but steadily for the
past century, and it will continue until the concept of "gender" is societally
offensive.

~~~
wat0
Tumblr isnt real life. Its more likely people will stop being offended by
things once they realize it's the weakest form of argument and serves no
purpose other than to be used as an argumentative social trump card and non-
sequitor: to reduce credibility from one person and move authority to another.

------
Dewie
> Brines believes the quandary many couples find themselves in comes down to
> this: “The less gender differentiation, the less sexual desire.”

The 21st century catches up with common sense.

