Women Don't Want To Have Sex If Their Partner Doesn't Help Them Around The House. It's Not Just About Cleaning, Scientists Say

Science has proven it. According to the latest studies by Canadian and Australian scientists, there really is a so-called eternal child (man-child), i.e. a man who helps little or not at all in the household. In the eyes of his partner, he slowly becomes "just" another child to take care of, and this is directly reflected in her desire for to have sex with hime. Since she does not see a man who does not participate in housework as a partner, she does not feel the desire to be intimate.

An extra child to take care of

More than a thousand women in relationships with men, coming from all over the world and all having children under the age of 12, completed the questionnaire. Gender inequality, which also manifests itself in the home, directly affects the desire for sex in these relationships. Women whose partners do not take part in the running of the household have a lower level of care.

They expressed to the scientists that they sometimes feel that their partner is just an extra child that needs to be taken care of. It is more difficult for them to teach the grown man a new skill, to teach them to take care of the household, than it is to simply fulfil the task themselves, but this leads to an unequal distribution of not only work, but also fatigue, and it shifts the perception of women from the position of partner to the position of mother and caregiver.

These tasks include not only cleaning and cooking, but also child care (from hygiene to homework to transportation to school and clubs) or meal and budget planning.

Caring for plants, maintaining order, organising family celebrations or dates, preparing children for special occasions, mental and emotional support for children, planning trips and vacations, all of this belongs to the so-called unpaid work, which in most cases is more often performed by women.

If women perceive their partners as dependent on them (that is, they cannot take care of the running of the household on their own), their sexual interest in such a man decreases, scientists have shown. In an article for The Conversation, the authors of the study say that there is still a need to study how the division of labor works in same-sex couples. In these relationships, gender stereotypes do not have to play such a strong role and expectations do not have to be so preconceived.

It is possible that a "man-child" can be anyone who is not involved in the running of the household and becomes in the eyes of the other person just a dependent person or another child.