First Things: Sharing Chores?
By Wilfred McClay
Wednesday, July 25, 2007

My suspicions were aroused when I saw a headline to a July 1 Associated Press story in the hometown paper, declaring “‘Sharing Chores’ Moves Up On Good-Marriage List.” This yawner of a finding was attributed to a Pew Research Center study just released on the “generation gap” in “values and behaviors.” The article itself, by national writer David Crary of the AP, mentioned the fact that “sharing chores” had moved ahead of “children” as a factor in making for a good marriage. But you had to read over to the jump page before you knew that some family experts (two are cited) may be quite concerned about the implicit de-emphasis upon childrearing and what it tells us about the state of American marriage and family life.

Hmm, I thought. Does this ordering of the account really reflect the priorities in Pew’s own presentation of the findings of its study? I looked elsewhere for the same story and found that the major media were generally running it under the title ”Key to a Good Marriage? Share Housework,” which you will find used in this version, as well as this, this, this, and . . . well you get the idea. And indeed, the opening sentence seemed clearly to point to the same emphasis: “The percentage of Americans who consider children ‘very important’ to a successful marriage has dropped sharply since 1990, and more now cite the sharing of household chores as pivotal, according to a sweeping new survey.” the rest