Megan Fox and couples who do the dishes together stay happier

I was looking at the June 2009 ELLE magazine which has the sultry Megan Fox on its cover when my vision latched on this catchy title "DON'T BREAKUP! THE SCIENCE OF STAYING TOGETHER"

A simple Yahoo! search with the words "the science of staying together" did not match anything on the first page, but instead I found some other related stuff.

So, this is a few of them.

A research done by the London School of Economics (LSE), entitled “Men’s Unpaid Work and Divorce” found out that divorce rates are lower in families where husbands help out with the housework, shopping and childcare.

The study's conclusion also opens up the 1960s theory that marriages were most stable when men focused on paid work and women were responsible for housework.

“The lowest-risk combination is one in which the mother does not work and the father engages in the highest level of housework and childcare,” the study found.

The study also suggests that fathers’ contribution to unpaid work at home stabilises marriage regardless of mothers’ employment status. This also means that the risk of divorce among working mothers, while greater, is substantially reduced when fathers contribute more to housework and childcare.

The whole article here.

In another related study published in 2009 by The University of Western Ontario revealed that couples who share the responsibility for paid and unpaid work report higher average measures of happiness and life satisfaction than those in other family models.

Researchers suggest that the shared roles model is advantageous to society in terms of gender equity and its ability to maximise labour force participation by all adults. It also leaves women less vulnerable in the case of separation, divorce or death of a spouse.

The article here.

Other related articles here.

One thing that I have faith in is that, these kind of studies, although customised and done to a different culture (western subjects), but if replicated (and done locally) would more or less give the same kind of results.

Would you agree on that?