Want a happy home life? Who doesn't? The key may lie in sharing both the paid and unpaid work that goes into raising a family.
A recent study has shown that those couples who divide up all the work are the happiest. This may be the solution to partners who apparently spend 40 minutes a day arguing over chores.
However, the shared way of running a home and family has been found to have one drawback.
The study of family structures, published by the University of Western Ontario, found that while sharing all the work brought happiness and life satisfaction, it was also found to be "high on stress" for men.
Approximately one quarter of the couples who took part in the study said they split the paid and unpaid work with each doing about 40 to 60 percent.
They reported higher than average levels of life satisfaction and happiness compared to couples who divided the workload using other arrangements.
When children were part of the household, it was found to be run on more traditional lines with women doing more unpaid work for the family and men doing more paid work.
Or they were found to use a "women's double burden" model where the woman does as much or more paid work than the man and more of the unpaid work. More than a quarter of the couples surveyed were in that double burden category and many of those had young children.
The researchers concluded that sharing all the roles had advantages in terms of gender equality and was beneficial to society in many ways.
But they believed the differences between how couples divided workloads were small and there was no clear winner. It seems there is no easy answer to sorting out who does what, unless you get a cleaner I suppose.
How do you divide the paid and unpaid work in your house? Are you happy with the arrangement?
Source (Parentdish US)