This week we reported about a hidden statistical nugget in a story from China Daily, claiming that Beijing men spend almost as much time (1 hour 50 minutes) on daily household tasks as women (1 hour and 58 minutes). To test this we conducted a little survey of our own.

Early polling of beijingkids readers show women doing almost 2.5x the amount of housework compared to men, despite this original report stating that men and women were just about equal. Our tally is currently at 117 minutes for women compared to 43 minutes from men.

The original study by the Beijing survey office of the National Bureau of Statistics was created to analyze the rise in working hours of Beijingers, and polled 4,238 people older than 15 in 1,700 households. It stated that while Beijing women averaged 58 minutes less in the workplace, they worked eight minutes more than men doing chores.

While our readers’ numbers might be skewed by their dependency on ayis or mother-in-laws pitching in, the skewed ratio still holds: women in our readership group are doing nearly three times the housework than men. We hope this isn’t the case as there is much that can still be done by men outside of cleaning and cooking to share the mental load. Help us to more accurately determine who’s doing the lion’s share by forwarding our survey to your friends and acquaintances so that we can conclude our ultimate treatise on the Beijing expat family chore wars.

While it might be the tendency to believe that men don’t do their share of housework, times are definitely changing and it is becoming the norm for the patriarch to shoulder more and more of these household responsibilities.

If you are a mother out there looking for more support from the old man, set aside some time to develop a plan or a chore wheel to support each other through equally divvying out these essential responsibilities. Also, check this list out for more ways dads can help share the mental/physical load of parenthood.

Once, I attended a baby shower on a Saturday afternoon. The next day the grateful mother-to-be thanked my husband for looking after our children while I attended the event. I found her words interesting.

Now, I believe in saying thank you, and I’m all for not taking people for granted. And just so you know, my husband and I make a point of expressing gratitude whenever one of us holds the fort at home while the other one of us is out. However, in all my years of being a mother, nobody (other than my husband) has ever thanked me for taking care of my own offspring. I don’t crave accolades. I’m just giving voice to my musings on the archaic notion that attending to the children is “the woman’s job”, and thus when a man spends time alone with his children he is somehow doing something extraordinary.

Perhaps I can attribute my take on this matter to my own childhood. When I was growing up, my mother never hesitated to leave my siblings and me with my father while she was out. I guess she figured that if my Dad could simultaneously run two companies and successfully coordinate a team of hardheaded employees, then surely four lively children were no match for him. And sure enough, my Dad always rose to the occasion.

He would pick groceries up on his way home from work, he’d do our hair and send us out into the world looking presentable, and he’d make us sandwiches for our packed lunch. There was no cheerleading squad applauding his every move. He just got on and did what needed to be done, because that is what parents do.

Fast forward a few years, and my husband and I find ourselves in the same predicament that my parents were in— thousands of miles away from our extended family, and parenting as a team. Just like my Dad all those years ago, my husband continually demonstrates that working a full-time job does not mean one cannot be a hands-on father.

When my husband baths our children, takes them to the playground or puts them to bed at night, I am extremely grateful, but I am not in awe. While I appreciate the fact that he has been at work all day, I am also conscious that my children are his children too. And if they are his children too, then when he attends to their practical needs he is not performing some marvelous feat, he is simply doing what parenthood requires of him.

Photo: Pamela Djima