A long-running study of relationship satisfaction has found that couples who share paid work, housework and childcare more evenly tend to report stronger partnerships. The findings come from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey, which has followed thousands of Australians for almost 25 years.
Researchers found that couples who divided their weekly hours of paid and unpaid work approximately equally reported higher relationship quality, whether or not they had dependent children.
Roger Wilkins, an economics professor at the University of Melbourne and a co-author of the report, said changing employment patterns had contributed to the shift away from traditional household roles.
“Historically, we saw a division of labor where women tended to specialise more in home production as we call it in economics – that is running the household – while men tended to specialise in paid employment, but that has shifted a lot over time,” he said.
“Now less specialisation and a more equitable division of both paid and unpaid work translates to better satisfaction for both partners in a relationship.”
Men have increased the amount of time they spend on household labour by about 12 minutes a day since 2012, although women have not reduced their contribution.
Relationship satisfaction follows a 24-year curve
The research also identified a long-term pattern in how relationship satisfaction changes. Ratings are high during the early years, then gradually decline for about 24 years before beginning to rise again.
Inga Lass, a University of Melbourne researcher and report co-author, described the pattern as a “U-curve” that begins after a couple moves in together.
“On average, it feels very strong at first, with that rating slowly declining for 24 years, before it picks back up,” she said.
The lowest point typically comes when both partners are in their mid-to-late 40s. The researchers suggested that pressures including work, household bills and raising children may begin to ease after about 25 years, giving couples more opportunity to focus on their relationship.
The recovery in satisfaction is stronger for men and less pronounced, as well as later, for women. Men and women in their 20s and early 30s report similar levels of satisfaction, but a gap emerges from the late 30s onwards, with women reporting greater dissatisfaction.
Across the second half of life, men consistently report higher relationship satisfaction than women. However, in opposite-sex relationships, a woman’s satisfaction level is a better predictor of whether the relationship will end, and women are more likely to initiate a separation.
The survey found that women were most satisfied when housework and childcare were shared equally. Their satisfaction did not increase when their partner performed most of those tasks.
Women in relationships where they were the primary earner also reported lower satisfaction than women in couples where the man was the main earner or both partners earned similar amounts.
Overall, the happiest couples appeared to be those without children, with relatively even earnings and a broadly equal division of housework. The least satisfied were couples with dependent children where the mother was the primary earner and usually carried out most unpaid work.
Women in same-sex relationships reported higher relationship quality than women in opposite-sex relationships, although the same pattern was not found among men. Couples living in mainland capital cities also reported higher satisfaction on average than those in regional and rural areas.
Financial stress and disability affecting either partner were identified as two clear factors associated with lower relationship quality.
Despite the broad findings, relationship ratings were lower on average between 2020 and 2024 than they had been between 2003 and 2006. The report said this may reflect the upheavals since 2020, including the pandemic and the cost-of-living pressures associated with high inflation and rising interest rates.
The HILDA survey has tracked the same 9,000 households since 2001, with the latest survey conducted in 2024.
