"Children of college-educated parents spend less time on chores over all, but the difference is almost all among girls."

"Daughters of college graduates spend 25 percent less time on chores than daughters of parents with no more than a high school education. But they still spend 11 minutes more a day than sons. Educated parents seem to have changed their expectations for their daughters but not for their sons, [said Sandra Hofferth, a sociologist at the University of Maryland who was a co-author of the recent analysis and has spent her career studying how children spend their time]."

From "A ‘Generationally Perpetuated’ Pattern: Daughters Do More Chores/They also earn less allowance, suggesting that the gender inequality in pay begins at home, and early in life. But there are signs the gap is narrowing." (NYT).

Lots of other statistics in the article, and I find it hard to believe people (adult and children) spend so much time on housework, so I'm skeptical about all of it, but what interested me there is that more educated parents, compared to less educated parents, are easing up on their daughters, while the 2 groups are treating their sons the same. That is, the college educated people are approaching equity by demanding less from daughters, not by making sons do more. If we believe these statistics — and, again, I'm skeptical — it seems that half an hour a day is the expectation being converged on.

What do you think is the right amount of time a child should devote to household chores every day? I think it's completely confusing to measure in time alone and not to take account of the difficulty of the task and the enjoyability of it. Much of the work, I think, is looking after younger siblings, and that's something that can take a long time but also be relaxing, pleasurable, and combined with doing something else you'd do even without that extra responsibility. It's not really accurate to compare that work in time to the work of, say, mowing the lawn. Also, the same task can be done fast or slow. If I one kid loads the dishwasher in 5 minutes and the other takes 15, did the second kid do 3 times as much work? If you say yes, you're encouraging dawdling and inefficiency.