According to new research, women are adding inches to their waistlines because they don’t do as much housework as the previous generations.
Whereas the previous generations had to get scrubbing at those clothes and tramping on them in big buckets or whatever, apparently nowadays we have it easy as we have all the gadgets to do it for us.
Yes, we’ve got gadgets that help us out more, but does that really mean that we don’t do as much work as our great grandparents used to do?!
I for one still get down on my hands and knees and scrub my kitchen floor by hand. (When I can be bothered. It’s a bloody big kitchen floor and it takes 2 hours to clean properly. Gah.)
Surely that puts me up there with those tramping up and down on their washing 70 years ago?!
I walk everywhere as I don’t drive. Including the two mile round school walk trip twice a day.
Women can still burn up to a 1000 calories a day just like they used to be able to.
A couple of hundred calories chasing about after the small ones (let’s face it, you burn off many pounds trying to keep them out of mischief). Another couple of hundred traipsing up and downstairs all day, every day lugging random toys from room to room to put away.
Ironing endless sets of clothes from an ironing pile that never seems to get any smaller, no matter how many times you attack it. (I’m sure it breeds when you’re not looking, or something.)
So never mind the ‘women are putting inches on’ rubbish.
We’re all working just as hard, thank you very much.
Glad I’m not the only one that thinks the ironing pile breeds when you’re not looking!
I’m sure the minute my back’s turned and I’m looking the other way they all jump out of the basket and start boffing each other, lol!
Then all lie down quietly as if they weren’t doing anything when I turn back round…. 
Just because there is not the same sort of housework doesn’t mean that there is not housework and it doesn’t mean that women are spending the remainder of their time on the sofa. My mum works a full time job and still makes the house I grew up in look amazing. Surely it’s not what the activities of women are (does it matter if I’m scrubbing the kitchen floor or cycling to work?), but whether they are the sorts of activities that are hard work.
It’s similar to being told exams are getting easier, or the whole ‘we had to walk three miles every day in the snow to get an education’. It’s incomparable.
I left a twitter joke to say that if it was true we’re fat because we didn’t do housework I’d be a size 18 (and I’m actually an 8!). Actually, I don’t scrub floors or iron, but like most mums I am on the go constantly – up and down stairs and I’m sure I wash (and pick up off the floor) more clothes than my kids actually wear! Like you, I walk a lot too. Us mums are as buy as ever and many of us are fitting in jobs too, whereas in the past most were ‘just’ mums.
The real reason people are overweight is availability of cheap food – we don’t have to grow it or kill it these days, so we can eat as much as we like!
Good post
I agree, if anything it’s the vast range of cheap foods – nothing to do with the level of housework we do!
I am hoping to burn a few hundred calories later, by tackling my ceiling-high ironing!! Nice to find you via the blog hop