This afternoon, I walked over to Bloomberg headquarters at 58th and Lex to hear an author, a former Goldman Sachs (GS) managing director named Sharon Meers, talk about high-achieving men and women and how to stay successful and sane and married all at the same time.
下午,我步行至彭博公司(Bloomberg)總部,聽一位名叫莎倫?密爾茲(Sharon Meers)的前高盛董事總經理談論有成就的男男女女如何保持成功和理智,同時婚姻也一直不會亮紅燈。
Meers co-wrote a book called Getting to 50/50, which was released a few months ago. Lots of fascinating stats, but some of the most intriguing revolved around the male-female balance of work at home. In today's talk to about 200 Bloombergers (a gender-balanced crowd), Meers mentioned that when couples share housework, the risk of divorce drops.
密爾茲與人共同撰寫了一本名叫《兩性相處》(Getting to 50/50)的書,這本書在幾個月前剛剛發行,其中有很多非常好的數據統計,不過最吸引人的地方是圍繞著男女家務平衡方面的。在面對200名彭博員工(男女數量相等)的談話中,密爾茲提到當夫婦分擔家務時,離婚的風險就會下降。
Divorce risk drops sharply when the wife has a job. The ideal set-up is when the man earns 60% of the income and does 40% of the housework. That's when divorce risk is lowest of all.
當妻子有一份工作時,離婚風險將會顯著下降。最完美的結構是丈夫賺取家中60%的收入,而做40%的家務。這個時候離婚風險是最低的。
(The sex is also better then, by the way. When men do substantial housework, couples have more frequent and satisfying sex. Meers shared this factoid privately, and she lays it all out in her book, in a section called "When He Does Windows…")
(順便說一下,這個時候性生活也會更好。當丈夫分享了一定量的家務后,夫妻的性生活將更頻繁并且令人滿意。密爾茲私下分享了這一點,并且在她書中名叫"當他擦窗戶的時候……"的章節中也有展開。)
And where in the world do men do the most to help their wives at home? Meers doesn't have those stats, but I found them, coincidentally, yesterday in a preview of another book due out in September. Women Want More, by Boston Consulting Group senior partner Michael Silverstein, is a marketer's guide to capturing "the world's largest and fastest-growing market." As part of the research for the book, BCG asked 12,000 women in 22 countries a battery of 120 questions. And among the rich findings…
世界上哪里的男人盡最大努力幫助他們在家的妻子呢?密爾茲沒有這些數據,不過很湊巧,昨天在另一本9月將發行的新書預告中,我找到了答案。這本名叫《女人想要更多》(Women Want More)的作者是波士頓咨詢集團(Boston Consulting Group,BCG)高級合伙人邁克爾?斯烏爾斯坦(Michael Silverstein),它從市場營銷人員角度對爭奪"世界上最大、增長最快的市場"做出了指導。作為本書調查的一部分,BCG詢問了來自22個國家的12,000位婦女連續120個問題。
"At least one-third of men never help their wives/partners with chores," according to the BCG survey. Where do men do the least housework? Japan. Indian men do the most. And American men? They come somewhere in between, though closer to India than Japan.
BCG的調查顯示"至少1/3的男人從不幫忙做家務".世界上哪里的男人做家務最少呢?日本。而印度人做得最多。那美國人呢?他們處在中間,更接近印度人而不是日本人。
By the way, chores cause more domestic arguments than anything else except money–at least in the U.S., the BCG survey suggests. In Europe, BCG found, chores are the No. 1 trigger of domestic arguments.
另外,BCG的調查顯示:家務活是僅排在金錢之后,最能造成家庭糾紛的---至少在美國是這樣。而在歐洲,BCG調查得出,家務活在造成家庭糾紛上處于首位。
That doesn't surprise author Meers. "Among people over 40," she says, "two-thirds of divorces are initiated by women. And studies show that 80% of the fights are about housework."
這些數據并不讓密爾茲感到驚訝。她說:"在40歲以上的人群中,2/3的離婚都是由女人提出的。并且研究表明80%的沖突都是由家務引起的。"