Men Doing Housework Causes Divorce, Says Department of Lazy Husbands

A groundbreakingly retro new study making the rounds today purports to prove that households where the man does half of the housework experience a higher divorce rate than couples where the woman does the housework and the man spends the day doing other stuff, like reading the newspaper in an easy chair while smoking a pipe or scratching his balls while watching football. What other cutting edge research can we expect in the future?

The study was conducted in Norway and written about in the Telegraph and pretty thoroughly debunked by the fantastic Jen Doll over at the Atlantic Wire. Basically, the Telegraph characterized the work as “a slap in the face for gender equality,” crowed about the fact that women who did more work around the house were totes happy about it, and urged basically urged ladies to shut up and clean up, for the sake of their marriage.

It’s all so silly that I don’t even want to start on it (tons of other research has shown that more educated women tend to marry later, and later marriages tend to result in a more equitable distribution of household labor and lower divorce rates, etc.), because it’s too late in the week for me to sustain another rage-on. But, just because some of you are probably already drunk, let’s brainstorm some ideas for the next archaic status quo affirming bit of research. I’ll get you started.

• Wives who give blow jobs on demand are 75% less likely to die of breast cancer.
• Servile women are much less likely to force their husbands to drive drunk.
• Cool wives would let their husbands have a 22-year-old girlfriend. Men have needs.
• The case for shutting your yap: quiet ladies lead to fewer house fires.
• Got any other ideas? Share ’em!
• [Telegraph]