Women more likely to seek a divorce due to housework responsibilities

The study – called How Couples Meet and Stay Together – focused on 2,262 heterosexual adults in the United States, from 2009 to the present day.

All participants were aged between 19 and 64 and in a relationship when they first agreed to take part in the study.

Over the course of six years, the researchers noted that 371 of the adults had ended the relationship with their partner or had chosen to divorce.

A total of 92 divorces took place among those that were married when the study was first launched, and women had been responsible for initiating 69 per cent of them.

The general consensus among the married women was that they were not as content with their marriages as men, who, on a scale used by the study, were significantly happier.

However, among unmarried couples, women on average reported their happiness with the relationship at 4.29, slightly higher than men who had a score of 4.22, with five being the highest result possible.

Figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) have shown that the results from the study are comparable to the UK’s divorce rates.

In 2012, out of 118,140 British cases, women were granted 65 per cent of all divorces.

Michael Rosenfeld, an associate professor of sociology at Stanford University and leader of the study, said: “I think that marriage as an institution has been a little bit slow to catch up with expectations for gender equality.

“Wives still take their husband’s surnames, and are sometimes pressured to do so.

“Husbands still expect their wives to do the bulk of the housework and the bulk of the childcare.

“On the other hand, I think that non-marital relationships lack the historical baggage and expectations of marriage, which makes the non-marital relationships more flexible and therefore more adaptable to modern expectations, including women’s expectations for more gender equality.”

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