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Strollerderby
They Say: Housework and Having Kids Don’t Mix
In our house, everyone helps out with chores. For the most part, I do the cooking and my wife does the clean-up because that’s where our strengths lie, but we aren’t locked into those roles. But the idea of “women’s work” is not new — there is a reason there is so much humor based on the idea of men not cleaning up after themselves or trying to get them to help out. In our culture, housework is not seen as masculine. Well, if you’ve had a hard time getting your partner to help out around the house, things just got a whole lot worse.
Fertility expert Dr. De-Kun Li, of Stanford University, has found that some types of housework can reduce the quality of a man’s sperm. Dr. Li says his “is the first study to show a link between measured electromagnetic fields and poor semen quality in humans, which may provide a logical explanation for why we have seen reductions in sperm quality in men over the past century.”
Dr. Allan Pacey, a fertility researcher at Sheffield University in the UK and a member of the British Fertility Society, agrees. “I believe there might be something in it,” he said. “If these results are repeated in a bigger study, we need to start thinking seriously about promoting advice about avoiding exposure.” I can imagine that would be perhaps the most successful ad campaign of all time: “Men — Save your sperm! Stay away from housework!”
Now, admittedly, the study was small and focused on the effects of electromagnetic fields — meaning taking out the trash is still okay — but if you’re trying to get pregnant it might be worth switching off the vacuum cleaner and handing him a broom instead. Or better still, hire a cleaning service while you work on the baby thing.
Photo: cohdra
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5 Comments
Comstock commented on Nov 17 09 at 1:48 pmWhat an odd and terrible spin the original news story has taken and you’ve repeated with something approaching zero skepticism. Let’s assume for a minute the EMF hypothesis is true, do you really think men only encounter electromagnetic fields from vacuum cleaners.
diera commented on Nov 17 09 at 2:10 pmI kind of think the 12+ hours a day my husband spends with a computer within feet of him, if not sitting on his lap, might be a *little* more significant in the electromagnetic department than the 30 minutes a year he spends in contact with the vacuum cleaner. And the last I heard, toilet brushes, sinks full of dirty dishes, baskets of unfolded laundry, and small children who need their noses wiped and diapers changed all run without any electric power whatsoever.
jenny tries too hard commented on Nov 17 09 at 2:21 pmhmmm…if the vaccuum might emit EMFs that harm his big bad sperms, maybe someone should make him a cute apron…y’know, for protection…
snarky mama commented on Nov 17 09 at 3:39 pmGood thing we’re done having kids. I guess my husband can vacuum all he want and smoke pot all day without worrying about his sperm. :)
Knitty commented on Nov 17 09 at 3:42 pmOh, honestly.
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