New research from the London School of Economics shows that married couples are twice as likely to divorce when the husband doesn’t contribute to chores.

The research looked at the details of 3,540 married British couples who had their first child in 1970. The families were then re-interviewed when their child passed their 5th, 10th and 16th birthdays. One in five of the couples had divorced by the time their eldest child had left school, and further analysis showed that housework could be a key cause.

The probability of divorce was 3.3% in families where the husband worked and the wife stayed at home to look after the children and do all of the housework. This increased to 6.5% when the woman also had a paid job...but if the father carried out his fair share of chores, that figure dropped to 4.5%. The risk of divorce was apparently doubled when the wife works but the husband only made a “minimal contribution” to childcare and housework.

Wendy Sigle-Rushton from the London School of Economics says, “The results suggest that the risk of divorce among working mothers, while greater, is substantially reduced when fathers contribute more to housework and childcare.” However, as the data is now several decades old, circumstances may have changed.

How much do you believe the results of the study? Do you know any couples who have divorced for these reasons? Or are the figures above simply a coincidence? Answers in the box below...