Recently I was invited by Macquarie Bank to an intimate event with Nicole Avery (Planning With Kids), Grace Titioka (With Some Grace), Fiona Purcell (My Mummy Daze) and moderated by journalist Angela Mollard to discuss survey results for a study titled A Family Portrait concentrating on happiness.
You know what happiness is Macquarie Bank? A million bucks in my bank account.
Macquarie Bank surveyed more than 2000 Australians from all walks of life as a follow up to their Mood, Life and Money survey in 2011.
So you wanna know who’s happy?
When it comes to single parenting, single mums cope better than single dads.
36% of single mums are most likely to find life enjoyable.
39% of single dads are most likely to describe themselves as bored and/or scared.
Single mums value respect (63%) achieving their personal best (7%) and curiosity (6%) more so than single dads.
Single dads value kindness (36%), hard work (26%) and flexibility (30%) more so than single mums.
But what about the children, even the adult children who are still at home?
47% of sons at home find life comfortable while 41% of daughters at home found life stressful.
48% of sons living out of home described life as enjoyable while 63% of daughters out of home found life enjoyable.
So sons prefer to live at home while daughter prefer to move out.
Anyone got any suggestion as to why that is?
Let’s add some fuel to the fire.
68% of men believe they do their fare share of the cleaning.
Men ask their daughters at home (10%) to do more washing than their sons (7%)
78% of men take care of the gardening.
Woman look after the grocery shopping, washing, ironing, cooking and cleaning – men agree
68% of men claim to do the household cleaning, but on 44% of their partners say they really do the cleaning. Women (with partners) do the majority of the cooking – men agree.
50% of women take care of the gardening.
Interestingly, during our roundtable conversation Angela Mollard said that men categorized taking out the rubbish as cleaning up as opposed to women who could class put away dry dishes, washing dirty ones and wiping down the counter as one whole act of cleaning up.
But, family life ain’t all about the chores.
This next result is a no brainer. Families who play together, stay together. But what are we doing together?
80% watch television.
71% eat out.
69% shop; I wonder if that includes groceries.
44% listen to music. Or in my case, individually on our portable devices.
42% like a good picnic.
42% watch sport.
Only 42%!!! Unless you’re in Melbourne where 47% of you watch sport.
If you’re in Adelaide you’re likely to participate in wine tasting; I assume with children of age. In Perth you’re likely to be outdoors, in Tasmania you’re likely to be indoors. And people in Brisbane don’t like board games.
Fascinating no? So what does this all mean? Well Macquarie Bank says they like to know what people like to do and how they see the world so they know how to talk to their customers. Anyone out there a Macquarie Bank customer? Even if you’re not, what do you think about these results?
Next post, I’ll have some more survey results talking about money, financial success, the future and how men and women talk.
