Men "borrowing" free time from women is driving the gender exercise gap
September 26, 2024 7:41 PM Subscribe
Men "borrowing" free time from women is driving the gender exercise gap.
As family demands increase, women's physical activity becomes more limited, but the same doesn't happen for men.
I think that is much more multifaceted.
You're literally reiterating the other bullet points in the list you quoted from, so clearly the authors are aware of your other concerns. Do you have evidence that the one they cite as the main driver is not, in fact, the main driver?
posted by agentofselection at 8:24 PM on September 26 [10 favorites]
You're literally reiterating the other bullet points in the list you quoted from, so clearly the authors are aware of your other concerns. Do you have evidence that the one they cite as the main driver is not, in fact, the main driver?
posted by agentofselection at 8:24 PM on September 26 [10 favorites]
absolutely believable to me. my wife and i have a toddler. she has a lot of health problems (many the result of her pregnancy - go figure) so im the primary earner and take on more than half of childcare duties.
i used to run 25-30 miles a week like it was nothing. now i get in maybe 5-10 a month.
it sucks. it takes a lot of love and rational thinking to avoid feelings of bitterness and loneliness. i can only imagine what its like when your circumstances are due more to social convention than medical reality.
posted by AlbertCalavicci at 9:48 PM on September 26 [2 favorites]
i used to run 25-30 miles a week like it was nothing. now i get in maybe 5-10 a month.
it sucks. it takes a lot of love and rational thinking to avoid feelings of bitterness and loneliness. i can only imagine what its like when your circumstances are due more to social convention than medical reality.
posted by AlbertCalavicci at 9:48 PM on September 26 [2 favorites]
Oh cool, it's my family and every single other family with kids I know! Except for the ones where the moms literally teach some sort of exercise as part of their paid job. Only way a lot of women figure out how to get out of the house to get to yoga is if they're getting paid to be there.
posted by potrzebie at 11:18 PM on September 26 [8 favorites]
posted by potrzebie at 11:18 PM on September 26 [8 favorites]
This must play out in other areas too, right? Women are less likely to prioritise creative work than men? Male partners writing, playing music, etc, in the time granted them by their partners doing more of the domestic work?
I'm very lucky that my husband values my writing time, and does his equal share of domestic work. But we don't have children, and that makes a enormous difference too.
(I accept that this is framed as men / women and I'm not a woman, but most of these studies don't recognise "people of marginalised gender" as a category so 🤷)
posted by Zumbador at 3:02 AM on September 27 [12 favorites]
I'm very lucky that my husband values my writing time, and does his equal share of domestic work. But we don't have children, and that makes a enormous difference too.
(I accept that this is framed as men / women and I'm not a woman, but most of these studies don't recognise "people of marginalised gender" as a category so 🤷)
posted by Zumbador at 3:02 AM on September 27 [12 favorites]
While it raises other good points, I'm shocked that this article doesn't mention sleep at all, which I would guess is a huge factor for those with babies and small children - women are overwhelmingly more frequently attending to the kids' wakeups at night and are far more sleep-deprived as a result (I am talking about overall trends, which are not invalidated by the occasional man who believes he is participating equally in night wakes, whether or not that is true in that instance). It's hard to exercise when you're so exhausted that you're barely making it through the day.
After separating and starting 50% custody, I now get an entire night of uninterrupted sleep half the time instead of maybe once every 2-3 months, my average sleep duration has increased by a full hour, and it's amazing how much more energy I have for things like exercise.
posted by randomnity at 5:13 AM on September 27 [22 favorites]
After separating and starting 50% custody, I now get an entire night of uninterrupted sleep half the time instead of maybe once every 2-3 months, my average sleep duration has increased by a full hour, and it's amazing how much more energy I have for things like exercise.
posted by randomnity at 5:13 AM on September 27 [22 favorites]
The labour and childcare disparity is never more grossly apparent to me than when I talk to my sister. The Southern male patrichial model is alive and well and I am fucking glad to not have to deal with it.
posted by Kitteh at 6:00 AM on September 27 [4 favorites]
posted by Kitteh at 6:00 AM on September 27 [4 favorites]
>Do same sex couples have a more equitable split?
The article implies yes: "That gap is particularly profound in heterosexual couples with kids, Professor Strazdins' research published in 2022 found."
posted by mrgoldenbrown at 6:26 AM on September 27 [2 favorites]
The article implies yes: "That gap is particularly profound in heterosexual couples with kids, Professor Strazdins' research published in 2022 found."
posted by mrgoldenbrown at 6:26 AM on September 27 [2 favorites]
Huge caveat that this is all from self-reported surveys, so, you know, massive grain of salt.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 7:05 AM on September 27 [1 favorite]
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 7:05 AM on September 27 [1 favorite]
Also:
" Z is a set of instrument variables to predict family work hours including house ownership, partner’s employment status, and having children under 6 years of age (these factors are likely to affect family work hours but do not directly affect physical activity—they affect physical activity indirectly family work hours)."
What this is saying is that they assume that the only way that 1) owning a home, 2) whether one's parter is employed and 3) whether you have children under 6 years of age affects physical activity is by affecting family work hours.
If you believe this I don't know what to tell you---the sleep example is a great one.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 7:18 AM on September 27
" Z is a set of instrument variables to predict family work hours including house ownership, partner’s employment status, and having children under 6 years of age (these factors are likely to affect family work hours but do not directly affect physical activity—they affect physical activity indirectly family work hours)."
What this is saying is that they assume that the only way that 1) owning a home, 2) whether one's parter is employed and 3) whether you have children under 6 years of age affects physical activity is by affecting family work hours.
If you believe this I don't know what to tell you---the sleep example is a great one.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 7:18 AM on September 27
Sorry for all the comments but:
>Do same sex couples have a more equitable split?
The article implies yes: "That gap is particularly profound in heterosexual couples with kids, Professor Strazdins' research published in 2022 found."
But the paper cited doesn't survey any homosexual couples:
Our study was restricted to heterosexual couple households to incorporate the gendered, between-person time exchanges.
make sense but the answer to this question is probably in another paper.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 7:21 AM on September 27 [3 favorites]
>Do same sex couples have a more equitable split?
The article implies yes: "That gap is particularly profound in heterosexual couples with kids, Professor Strazdins' research published in 2022 found."
But the paper cited doesn't survey any homosexual couples:
Our study was restricted to heterosexual couple households to incorporate the gendered, between-person time exchanges.
make sense but the answer to this question is probably in another paper.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 7:21 AM on September 27 [3 favorites]
While it raises other good points, I'm shocked that this article doesn't mention sleep at all, which I would guess is a huge factor for those with babies and small children - women are overwhelmingly more frequently attending to the kids' wakeups at night and are far more sleep-deprived as a result
I don't give parenting advice unless explicitly asked, but since my kids are awesome and I'm very vocal about being a stay at home dad until everyone was in school, I do get asked pretty regularly. My standard advice to everyone with a newborn is "Make the non-feeding partner get up and take care of the non-feeding bits then bring the baby to the feeding partner" because a) then all parents deal with a cranky kid and b) it builds a feeling "we're a team".
You get a lot of dudes who start to argue that they work hard all day. I usually point out their partner also just had a long day of work. How they react to that tells me a lot about the guy I'm talking to.
Also, seriously, dudes really need to step up.
posted by Gygesringtone at 8:09 AM on September 27 [10 favorites]
I don't give parenting advice unless explicitly asked, but since my kids are awesome and I'm very vocal about being a stay at home dad until everyone was in school, I do get asked pretty regularly. My standard advice to everyone with a newborn is "Make the non-feeding partner get up and take care of the non-feeding bits then bring the baby to the feeding partner" because a) then all parents deal with a cranky kid and b) it builds a feeling "we're a team".
You get a lot of dudes who start to argue that they work hard all day. I usually point out their partner also just had a long day of work. How they react to that tells me a lot about the guy I'm talking to.
Also, seriously, dudes really need to step up.
posted by Gygesringtone at 8:09 AM on September 27 [10 favorites]
This all resonates for me and we don't even have kids. Right now it's especially stark because I'm the sole/main breadwinner, but even when we were both working full time he somehow had hours every day to dedicate to fitness while I try to fit in little 40 minute high-intensity classes on my lunch and after work, hoping to somehow cobble together the proper amount of exercise.
There's definitely part of it that is an imbalance in household maintenance and other emotional/social labor. Some of that would be fixable in an equitable world (there would be as much pressure on him to do household labor as there is on me) and some of it wouldn't (my family will always be an extra layer of time/effort/work for me, and even if he's contributing to that it's my dumbass family, so that's mostly on me).
But there's also this less tangible thing, where he has always just felt okay about saying "I need/want this, so I'm going to do it" no matter what else was going on. When he was working, he would just bring his work laptop to the gym, something that I'm pretty sure would get me fired on the spot but somehow mattered zero percent to his bosses. He just feels like the master of his time in a way I, and I'd argue most of the women I know, absolutely never have and never will.
A friend of mine once described it as, nobody seems to ever have told men that at some point they will need to give a shit about things other people give a shit about. Whereas that's practically the only thing they ever tell women, in a thousand different words.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 9:51 AM on September 27 [14 favorites]
There's definitely part of it that is an imbalance in household maintenance and other emotional/social labor. Some of that would be fixable in an equitable world (there would be as much pressure on him to do household labor as there is on me) and some of it wouldn't (my family will always be an extra layer of time/effort/work for me, and even if he's contributing to that it's my dumbass family, so that's mostly on me).
But there's also this less tangible thing, where he has always just felt okay about saying "I need/want this, so I'm going to do it" no matter what else was going on. When he was working, he would just bring his work laptop to the gym, something that I'm pretty sure would get me fired on the spot but somehow mattered zero percent to his bosses. He just feels like the master of his time in a way I, and I'd argue most of the women I know, absolutely never have and never will.
A friend of mine once described it as, nobody seems to ever have told men that at some point they will need to give a shit about things other people give a shit about. Whereas that's practically the only thing they ever tell women, in a thousand different words.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 9:51 AM on September 27 [14 favorites]
>Do same sex couples have a more equitable split?
Based on reading Kate Mangino's "Equal Partners" https://katemangino.com/equal-partners, even with same sex couples - or other configurations - people still end up conforming to gender roles and not splitting as equitably. So the short answer is "technically yes", but that is leaning heavily on *more* equitable and I think anyone in a partnered relationship who values equitably splitting should assume there is room for improvement.
posted by Nec_variat_lux_fracta_colorem at 11:00 AM on September 27 [3 favorites]
Based on reading Kate Mangino's "Equal Partners" https://katemangino.com/equal-partners, even with same sex couples - or other configurations - people still end up conforming to gender roles and not splitting as equitably. So the short answer is "technically yes", but that is leaning heavily on *more* equitable and I think anyone in a partnered relationship who values equitably splitting should assume there is room for improvement.
posted by Nec_variat_lux_fracta_colorem at 11:00 AM on September 27 [3 favorites]
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One thing they put in the article was “mom guilt.” I think that just scratches the surface on why both parents act in the ways they do. The priorities and drives of people, hugely influenced by social / learned behavior, perceived pressure, what it’s like to engage in fitness, all pushes these differences.
Also the fact the outdoor recreation can often feel and be less safe for women I’m sure doesn’t help. Outdoor running, biking, etc solo is wonderful on lonely roads and paths, but I do notice that more women stick to busier roads. I’ve never read a study, but I bet that is driven by desire for safety and feeling safe.
I think that gyms also can be no fun as a woman (I certainly don’t like them as a man either. The Pilates studio I go to which is a woman centric space that has always felt welcoming even if they don’t stock any clothes for me in the store corner.)
Article seems to be about parents of younger kids and mine are 17 and 19 at this point.
posted by creiszhanson at 8:09 PM on September 26 [3 favorites]