Topline Trends Tuesday: Men still avoiding aprons

According to this recent Toronto Star article, in the last census, nearly 25% of Canadian women spent 30 hours or more taking care of the home in 2006, compared to 7.7% of men. This US report shows that the trend is the same in that country, too.

What’s interesting for me as a trend tracker is that, while many young men tell me they love food TV shows and want to know how to become chefs like Jamie Oliver and Anthony Bourdain, it’s this same group who do the fewest household chores. In fact, according the US report linked above, teenage boys and young males performed the fewest hours of household work – 8.9 hours per week, compared with 15.9 for young women.

While “chores” aren’t broken down between cooking and cleaning, I have a feeling that this old ad isn’t as quaint as I’d like to think.

What do you think prevents more men from being involved in daily food preparation? Are women too ready to jump in and make a meal or do we make them feel unwelcome in the kitchen?