What Same-Sex Couples Show Us About Housework

If the uneven split of housework were only about gender, couples of two women or two men would share it evenly. If it were only about income and working hours, they would split it just as unevenly as everyone else. That's why research on same-sex couples is one of the most useful tests we have. The answer is neither.

What the research found

Across several decades, the broad finding is that same-sex couples tend to share household work more evenly than different-sex couples.

In a 2007 paper, the psychologist Lawrence Kurdek looked at forty-three gay and thirty-six lesbian couples, all with both partners working full time. Lesbian couples were more likely to say tasks were done equally by both. Gay couples more often split them so each partner specialized. In both, what mattered most for satisfaction wasn't the exact split. It was whether the division felt fair.

A 2012 study by Abbie Goldberg, JuliAnna Smith and Maureen Perry-Jenkins looked at 160 couples who had adopted their first child: 55 lesbian, 40 gay and 65 heterosexual. Since nobody had given birth or was breastfeeding, biology couldn't explain who did what. Same-sex couples shared childcare and housework more evenly. Among heterosexual couples, wives overwhelmingly became the primary caregiver.

Same-sex couples aren't immune

In the Goldberg study, imbalances still appeared in all three kinds of couple, along predictable lines. The partner who worked fewer hours did more childcare. The partner who earned less did more of the traditionally feminine tasks. Money and time pushed everyone toward specialization. In same-sex couples they just weren't compounded by gender.

A 2021 cross-national study by Maaike van der Vleuten, Eva Jaspers and Tanja van der Lippe, using surveys from seven Western countries, added a nuance. Female couples split domestic work more equally than male couples, and a country's wider gender culture affected how even the split was.

Fair, not equal

A small 2024 interview study of ten same-sex couples in Australia and New Zealand, by Alice Beban and Glenda Roberts, was called Fair but Not Equal. Most couples didn't split housework evenly, yet most felt their arrangement was fair. What made the difference was flexibility instead of rigid rules, regular honest conversation, and treating unpaid work as equal in value to paid work.

What any couple can take from this

• The familiar split between men and women isn't natural or inevitable. Same-sex couples don't automatically reproduce it.
• Money, hours and children push every couple toward an imbalance if nobody looks.
• Feeling that the arrangement is fair, and was reached together, matters more than exact numbers.

A same-sex couple can't fall back on "that's what women do" or "that's the husband's job". They have to decide. Different-sex couples can make the same choice. They just have to notice there's a choice to make.

More on this in Fair, Not Equal and How Nobody Decided. The full research, with every study's limits, is chapter six of The Work Nobody Sees.

Questions people ask

Do same-sex couples share housework more equally?

Research over several decades suggests they tend to, though imbalances still appear when one partner earns less or works fewer hours.

Why do different-sex couples split housework unevenly?

Studies of adoptive parents suggest it isn't biology. Expectations about gender, combined with differences in income and hours, push couples toward a familiar split.

What makes a housework arrangement feel fair?

In the research, flexibility, regular honest conversation and valuing unpaid work equally mattered more than an exact 50/50 split.