Married couples that spend more time on household chores have more sex, according to a study co-authored by an ASU professor.

Scott Yabiku, an associate professor in the School of Social Family Dynamics, authored the study with Constance Gager, an associate professor at Montclair State University.

The study, “Who has the time? The relationship between household labor time and sexual frequency,” will appear in print before the end of the year and was released online two weeks ago, Yabiku said.

The study examined data from a 1997 survey of 6,877 married couples.

“Housework” within the study included nine types of chores: cleaning, cooking, washing dishes, laundry, driving family members to activities, shopping, yard work, car maintenance and paying bills.

According to the study, wives typically spend 41.75 hours a week on housework, while their husbands spend 23.36 hours a week on similar activities. The couples surveyed reported having sex an average of 82.73 times per year.

Gager said she and Yabiku had originally wanted to research whether more time on household chores would lead to a decrease in sex.

“We hypothesized that when husbands contributed more to the housework, women would be more appreciative and less tired and more likely to engage in ‘thank you’ sex,” Gager said.

However, Yabiku said the opposite proved true in what he calls the “multiple spheres hypothesis,” which states that couples who work hard together also play hard together.

“There are different types of couples out there — some couples are very active,” Yabiku said. “They have a go-getter personality and make more time for sex.”

The important information to take away from the study is that doing more chores does not directly lead to more intimacy, Yabiku said.

“It’s not that if you do housework, you have more sex,” Yabiku said.
“It’s that managing your household and being active in your sex life is a result of a certain type of couple.”

He said this study didn’t include non-married couples, which are very different from married couples. He said that study could prove interesting for the future.

Currently, Gager and Yabiku are working on an additional study to be released in 2010 that examines the relationship between sexual frequency between couples and the break-up of marriages and cohabitant couples.

Reach the reporter at allison.gatlin@asu.edu.