Where are Men and Women Happiest in Their Homes?

There have been a number of different methods for attempting to document what people do in their homes, how people living together divide housework between themselves, and how they feel about it.  Initially, scholars just asked people questions like, “How many hours a week do you spend [fill in the blank with various household activities and obligations]?”  Certainly this method lends itself to statistical analysis, but what are we actually learning about people?

Research has found that people tend to over-estimate how much housework they actually do when asked on surveys.  Time use diary studies are a bit different and a lot more accurate.  This method asks participants to record their daily tasks and activities (where they were, what they did, how long they spent doing it, who they did it with, etc.) for small periods of time over the course of an entire day.  Most scholars agree that time use diary studies are more accurate portrayals of people’s actual experiences than surveys.  And it makes sense.  If you’ve ever tried to lose weight by eating less and then tried counted calories to lose weight, you can understand why.

Less research, however, focuses explicitly on how we feel when we’re doing different things throughout the day.  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (a psychology professor at the University of Chicago) set out to do just that (see here and here).  He gave study participants beepers that were programmed to go off at random moments throughout the day.  When paged, participants are asked to record what they are doing, who they are with, what they are thinking about, rate their emotional experience of the moment, and – significant for this blog – where they are. 

Review: Where Men Hide

Alright, so this is a bit of an essentialist text, but the images are amazing.  The book is the result of a collaboration between James Twitchell (an English and advertising professor at the University of Florida) and Ken Ross (a photographer – kcr319@gmail.com).  Professor Twitchell happened upon an article that mentioned a recent showing of Ross’ photography as he was waiting to get his hair cut.  Ken’s undertaking was a collection of photographs from spaces occupied primarily by men.  He called the show “Men’s Rooms.”  So, Ross shot dens, masonic lodges, boxing gyms, old bowling alleys, bars, hunting lodges, barber shops, and more (read more here; see some of the shots here).

James Twitchell teamed up with Ken, asked him to take a few more shots of some spaces he thought might add to the collection, and writes short cultural histories of the spaces documented in Ross’ photography.  Twitchell explains their significance to the men that occupy them and also historicizes the cultural forces that have pulled men away from these homosocial man dens of old.