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Surveyed 20 October 2021 · Published 2 August 2026

How husbands and wives with a young child spend the day

Japan's time use survey records how couples with a child under six spend the day. Where both parents work, the wife does 3.4 times as much unpaid domestic work as the husband, and his hours barely change when she is not employed.

3.4times more unpaid domestic work done by the wife, where both parents work and a child under six is at home1h54m · 6h31m

Source: Survey on Time Use and Leisure Activities 2021, Table 77-1: average time per day for husbands and wives in households with children, Japan and prefectures

01

What the survey measures

In households where both parents work and a child under six is at home, the husband spends 1h54m a day on unpaid domestic work and the wife spends 6h31m.

Every five years the Statistics Bureau asks tens of thousands of people to write down what they did, slot by slot, for one day. The 2021 round lets us isolate a specific group: married couples raising a child who is not yet at school.

The measure used throughout is the average across everyone in that group, counting a person who did none of an activity as zero. That choice matters. The survey also publishes an average across participants only, which would quietly exclude every husband who did no housework at all.

02

How the husband's day and the wife's day differ

The husband's day holds more paid work; the wife's holds more of everything unpaid, and she is still doing 3h34m of paid work herself.

The bars below are one full day, 1,440 minutes, for each spouse. Twenty published activity categories are rolled into four bands so the shape is legible; the full twenty are in the data table beneath.

Switch the day selector to Sunday and the husband's unpaid work roughly triples, from 1h16m on a weekday to 3h40m. The wife's rises too, to 7h18m. The gap narrows on Sundays but never closes.

How a husband and a wife spend one day

Households with a child under six, all days of the week. Use the menus to change the household type and the day.

Unpaid domestic work · Husband 1h54m · Wife 6h31m · 3.4×

  • Sleep, meals and personal care
  • Paid work and commuting
  • Unpaid domestic work
  • Free time and other travel
View data table
View data table
ActivityHusbandWife
Sleep7h50m7h55m
Personal care1h11m1h17m
Meals1h26m1h24m
Commuting to work or school48m29m
Paid work7h21m3h34m
Schoolwork2m3m
Housework33m2h36m
Caring or nursing1m3m
Childcare1h3m3h23m
Shopping17m29m
Travel other than commuting20m26m
TV, radio, newspapers and magazines29m21m
Rest and relaxation1h39m1h20m
Learning and self-development5m2m
Hobbies and amusements26m14m
Sports6m3m
Volunteering and social participation1m1m
Social life6m8m
Medical treatment6m4m
Other8m10m

Source: Survey on Time Use and Leisure Activities 2021, Table 77-1: average time per day for husbands and wives in households with children, Japan and prefectures · Averages include people who spent no time on the activity

03

The husband's hours barely change when the wife is not employed

When the wife is not employed, the husband's unpaid domestic work falls slightly — from 1h54m to 1h48m — while hers rises from 6h31m to 9h27m.

This is the finding that is hard to explain away. Moving between a dual-income household and one where only the husband is employed changes the wife's unpaid workload by nearly three hours a day. It changes the husband's by six minutes, in the wrong direction.

In other words, the household's total unpaid work is absorbed almost entirely by one person, and whether the other person has a job outside the home makes almost no difference to what he does inside it.

Unpaid domestic work by household type

Minutes per day of housework, caring, childcare and shopping. Use the menu to change the day of week.

Husband · Both parents employed: 1h54m → Husband employed, wife not employed: 1h48m

View data table · All days
View data table · All days
HouseholdPersonUnpaid domestic workPaid work
All households with a child under sixHusband1h53m7h18m
All households with a child under sixWife7h26m2h26m
Both parents employedHusband1h54m7h21m
Both parents employedWife6h31m3h34m
Husband employed, wife not employedHusband1h48m7h19m
Husband employed, wife not employedWife9h27m1m

Source: Survey on Time Use and Leisure Activities 2021, Table 77-1: average time per day for husbands and wives in households with children, Japan and prefectures · Averages include people who spent no time on the activity

04

The size of the gap by prefecture

Among dual-income couples, the wife's share of unpaid work ranges from 2.2 times the husband's in Kagoshima to 7.2 times in Ishikawa.

The national average conceals a wide spread. In the most equal prefectures the husband is doing well over two hours a day; in the least equal he is doing about an hour.

Treat the ranking with care. Each prefecture cell here rests on between 87 and 277 diary responses — Ishikawa and Kagoshima, the two ends of the range, sit at about 140 each. That is enough to see that the gap is large everywhere and that it varies, but not enough to establish the order, or to treat the distance between the extremes as a measured quantity. The sample size for every prefecture is in the data table.

How much more unpaid work the wife does, by prefecture

Wife's unpaid minutes divided by the husband's, all days of the week. Use the menu to change the household type.

Widest gap: Ishikawa 7.2× · Narrowest gap: Kagoshima 2.2×

1×7.2×
View data table · Both parents employed
View data table · Both parents employed
PrefectureHusbandWifeWife ÷ husbandResponses
Ishikawa1h7h13m7.2×138
Kagawa1h32m7h10m4.7×123
Ehime1h21m6h17m4.7×100
Nagasaki1h16m5h52m4.6×105
Fukuoka1h27m6h37m4.6×184
Osaka1h44m7h31m4.3×130
Okinawa1h33m6h43m4.3×141
Ibaraki1h25m5h47m4.1×93
Yamagata1h29m6h2m4.1×160
Okayama1h40m6h39m4.0×122
Kumamoto1h30m5h59m4.0×131
Shiga1h46m6h56m3.9×129
Yamaguchi1h35m6h7m3.9×105
Oita1h32m5h51m3.8×127
Gunma1h56m7h12m3.7×121
Aomori1h34m5h48m3.7×111
Nagano2h15m8h15m3.7×135
Toyama1h35m5h47m3.7×143
Saitama1h57m7h1m3.6×196
Mie2h9m7h44m3.6×109
Hiroshima1h41m6h3m3.6×124
Tokyo1h58m6h54m3.5×138
Hyogo1h42m5h56m3.5×116
Gifu1h52m6h24m3.4×143
Saga1h35m5h25m3.4×154
Aichi1h55m6h28m3.4×274
Miyagi1h54m6h21m3.3×97
Wakayama1h45m5h36m3.2×89
Kanagawa2h12m6h57m3.2×177
Tokushima1h48m5h41m3.2×108
Tochigi1h52m5h48m3.1×148
Chiba2h25m7h25m3.1×168
Kyoto1h55m5h52m3.1×101
Nara2h29m7h30m3.0×107
Yamanashi1h55m5h45m3.0×111
Iwate1h50m5h22m2.9×110
Tottori2h5h51m2.9×120
Fukui2h21m6h50m2.9×143
Shizuoka2h7m6h2.8×115
Hokkaido1h57m5h30m2.8×152
Fukushima2h6m5h52m2.8×128
Akita2h21m6h33m2.8×87
Kochi2h20m6h27m2.8×137
Miyazaki2h14m5h50m2.6×141
Niigata2h19m5h38m2.4×159
Shimane2h20m5h37m2.4×166
Kagoshima2h17m5h7m2.2×158

Source: Survey on Time Use and Leisure Activities 2021, Table 77-1: average time per day for husbands and wives in households with children, Japan and prefectures · Sample survey; prefecture cells rest on 87–277 responses