Study: Less sex for men who do more housework

January 30, 2013 - With work requirements and social situations constantly in flux for many couples, the roles men and women play in completing household chores has also been changing. But as a new study has apparently found, " media interest in the debate has crystallized around claims that men who participate in housework get more sex.... Results show that both husbands and wives in couples with more traditional housework arrangements report higher sexual frequency."

As you can expect, reports of the study, which have been generating lots of traffic online, and have been the fodder for plenty of Facebook and Twitter comments.

While there's plenty of ammunition available for either side of the argument, and it will generate a lot of back and forth online and in real life, one thing should be noted about the findings: Data used for the study, the Wave II of the National Survey of Families and Households, is from interviews conducted between 1992 and 1994.

How much has changed since then? Here are just 3 of the things that were going on from 1992 to 1994:

• When this data was collected, Lenny Dykstra, Curt Schilling and Darren Daulton were taking the Phillies to the 1993 World Series.

• At the time this data was collected, President Clinton had probably never heard of the name Monica Lewinsky, who was still studying in college and wouldn't become a White House intern until 1995.
• At the time this data was collected, the phone you see at the right (photo from Motorola.com) was the latest and greatest device released by Motorola: A cellular bag phone that emitted 3 watts of signal. By comparison, today's cell phones emit about 0.6 watts.

The study may be 100% scientifically reliable and the analysis 100% statistically sound... for people back in 1992 through 1994.

The study will definitely have people talking for some time to come, but as the researchers themselves mention in the conclusion of their report, " Because these data are older, there is a possibility that the relationships we document have changed."