Wife Going on 'Strike' Over Husband's Dirty Socks Applauded

A frustrated wife has declared she is going "on strike" with regard to picking up her husband's socks "to see how l long it takes him to do it himself." In a video posted to TikTok, @miijulie11 filmed the same spot in her house every day, while the socks piled up.

The clip has been viewed 1.9 million times and shows an increasingly large pile of socks. On day 3, @miijulie11 wrote: "only one sock added...where did the other one go". On day 8, she said: "taking everything in me not to pick these up!!!" On day 9, she captioned: "Gone, only took 9 days for him to notice."

One commenter under the video said: "I have never picked up my husband's clothes in fifty years. He doesn't expect me to be his parent but his partner".

@miijulie11 describes herself as "just here for the bants. Renovating a barn with 4 kids, 2 cats and a husband".

Polling by Gallup in 2020 found that women are still responsible for the lion's share of household chores. It said that overall women do 58 percent of the laundry and 51 percent of the cleaning and cooking, although these proportions have fallen by 12 percentage points each since 1996.

The issue has gained greater attention with the rise of stay-at-home parents. Research by the Pew Research Center has found that over 11 million U.S. parents, or 18 percent, were not working outside the home in 2016. It said that the stay-at-home proportion of U.S. parents was very similar to that of 1989, but with a marked increase in stay-at-home dads. The number of dads at home went from 4 percent to 7 percent, while the number of women rose by a percentage point to 28 percent.

The research also showed that an increasing number of men are staying at home specifically to care for their families, rather than due to unemployment or illness, at 24 percent for fathers compared to 78 percent of women.

The report said that more stay-at-home dads among Millennials than Gen Z: "In 2015-16, 21 percent of Millennial parents (ages 20 to 35 at the time) were stay-at-home parents, while that figure stood at 17 percent among Gen Z parents when they were the same age in 1999-2000.

In comparison, it found that: "Three-in-ten Millennial mothers ages 20 to 35 were at home with their children, compared with 25 percent of Gen X mothers a generation earlier. Among Millennial dads, 6 percent were home with their children in 2016, compared with 3 percent of Gen X fathers when they were a comparable age."

User WooHoo said: "I pick them up and put them back in the draw if you can't be bothered to put them in the wash don't expect me to... wash them."

User Becki460 wrote: "mine does this but luckily down his side of the bed where I can't see unless I go looking. eventually he runs out."

User L commented: "I did the same thing it took him a week but it was so hard not to pick them up."

Newsweek has reached out to @miijulie11 for comment.