Men say they are spending more time on household chores, and would like to do more – survey of 17 countries

Wessel Van Den Berg

Women perform between three and seven times more caregiving tasks than men in the global south. These include household domestic work and largely focus on caring for children.

Hopefully this is changing. The 2023 State of the World’s Fathers Report, themed “Centering Care in a World in Crisis”, explored the experiences and involvement in caregiving among 12,000 men and women, many of whom are parents, across 17 countries. The survey looked at who does the caregiving, how they care, for whom, and what men and women think about care.

I am one of five co-authors of the report, which unveiled a remarkable appreciation for care among respondents. In an online survey they overwhelmingly associated care with positive terms. “Love” was the most frequently mentioned word across all countries.

Other frequently mentioned words included “help”, “protection”, “attention”, “responsibility”, “health”, “kindness” and “family”.

Most of the men involved