世論 What Japan Thinks

A recent very detailed survey from Macromill Research Inc looked at the matter of cooking and married couples’ relationships

Demographics

Between the 2nd and 4th of April 2010 516 married female members of the Macromill monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 25.0% of the sample were in their twenties, 25.0% in their thirties, 25.0% in their forties, and 25.0% aged fifty or older.

You’ll note in the above results that there isn’t a separate entry for the wife working and a househusband. Whether there were no such couples, they were filtered out, or just forgotton about, I do not know.

My wife cooks about five or six days a week – at the weekends we’ll have one evening meal out, and during the week there’s occasionally times when she goes to the cinema, etc, and we meet somewhere to eat out. At home we almost always eat together – she’ll eat before me if I’m going to be later than about 7:30, but fortunately that rarely happens.

Research results

Q1: About how often do you cook an evening meal? Exclude just boiling rice or arranging shop-bought dishes, etc. (Sample size=516)

	Almost every day	5, 6 days per week	3, 4 days per week	1, 2 days per week	Less than that
All	75.8%	16.3%	4.5%	1.4%	2.1%
Twenties N=129	73.6%	15.5%	6.2%	1.6%	3.1%
Thirties N=129	73.6%	17.8%	6.2%	0.8%	1.6%
Forties N=129	79.1%	16.3%	3.1%	1.6%	0.0%
Fifty plus N=129	76.7%	15.5%	2.3%	1.6%	3.9%
Both working N=207	69.1%	17.9%	7.7%	2.4%	2.9%
Full-time housewife N=284	79.6%	15.8%	2.5%	0.7%	1.4%
With children N=348	81.0%	14.4%	2.9%	0.9%	0.9%
No children N=168	64.9%	20.2%	7.7%	2.4%	4.8%

Q1SQ: What do you do when you don’t cook an evening meal? (Sample size=125, multiple answer)

	All	Working N=64	Housewife N=58
Eat out	74.4%	68.8%	79.3%
Buy in pre-prepared food	62.4%	54.7%	70.7%
Husband cooks	35.2%	31.3%	36.2%
Parents cook	23.2%	32.8%	12.1%
Children cook	6.4%	7.8%	3.4%
Other	7.2%	9.4%	5.2%

The above results are curious as it would appear housewives are lazier, rather than what I might have expected, working wives being too busy to prepare food. Thinking further, I have forgotten that housewives are more likely to have children (such figures were not reported, though), thus perhaps less time. However, there was also data for those with children, yet they were less likely to eat out or buy in.

Q2: On average, how many dishes do you prepare for a meal? Exclude rice, miso soup. (Sample size=505)

	One	Two	Three or more
All	5.0%	50.7%	44.4%
Twenties N=125	8.0%	58.4%	33.6%
Thirties N=127	5.5%	65.4%	29.1%
Forties N=129	5.4%	50.4%	44.2%
Fifty plus N=124	0.8%	28.2%	71.0%
Both working N=201	7.0%	49.8%	43.3%
Full-time housewife N=280	3.6%	53.2%	43.2%
With children N=345	4.3%	53.6%	42.0%
No children N=160	6.3%	44.4%	49.4%

Q3: What do you often make? (Sample size=505, free answer, top ten)

Rank	Dish	Percentage
1	Stir-fry	76.4%
2	Boiled stuff	70.9%
3	Curry	70.5%
4	Meat and potatoes	62.0%
5	Ginger-fried pork	59.2%
6	Hamburger	57.4%
7	Hotpot	54.3%
8	Stew	53.7%
9	Fried chicken nuggets	45.5%
10	Gyoza (pot stickers)	44.4%

Q4: Do you like cooking? (Sample size=516)

	Love	Like	Dislike	Hate
All	23.1%	37.4%	32.6%	7.0%
Twenties N=129	31.0%	41.9%	23.3%	3.9%
Thirties N=129	17.8%	38.8%	33.3%	10.1%
Forties N=129	20.9%	35.7%	32.6%	10.9%
Fifty plus N=129	22.5%	33.3%	41.1%	3.1%

Q5: How good are you at cooking? (Sample size=516)

	Good	Reasonable	Not so good	Poor
All	8.3%	47.5%	35.9%	8.3%
Twenties N=129	5.4%	54.3%	34.1%	6.2%
Thirties N=129	6.2%	39.5%	43.4%	10.9%
Forties N=129	7.0%	49.6%	32.6%	10.9%
Fifty plus N=129	14.7%	46.5%	33.3%	5.4%

Q6: Do you put effort into increasing your repetoire, learning cooking techniques, etc (Sample size=516)

Yes, lots	4.5%
Yes to some degree	58.9%
Not really	33.9%
Not at all	2.7%

Q7: Do you want to go to a cooking school? (Sample size=516)

	Currently doing, investigating	Want to	Don’t want to
All	1.7%	30.6%	67.6%
Twenties N=129	1.6%	38.0%	60.5%
Thirties N=129	3.1%	43.4%	53.5%
Forties N=129	1.6%	24.0%	74.4%
Fifty plus N=129	0.8%	17.1%	82.2%
Good cooks N=288	3.1%	30.9%	66.0%
Bad cooks N=228	0.0%	30.3%	69.7%

Q8: How often do you eat an evening meal with your husband? (Sample size=516)

Almost every day	39.0%
Five or six days a week	10.9%
Three or four days a week	11.8%
One or two days a week	28.9%
Almost never	9.5%

Q9: Until how late will you wait for your husband? (Sample size=516)

Won’t wait at all	44.4%
Until 7 pm	12.0%
Until 8 pm	15.3%
Until 9 pm	13.4%
Until 10 pm	4.3%
Until 11 pm	1.7%
Until midnight	0.2%
Until he comes home	8.7%