General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20267 min read

House Husband

A house husband is a man who stays at home to clean the house, care for the children, and manage the household while his partner or spouse goes out to work.¹ The term describes a reversal of the traditional homemaker-breadwinner division of labor, and it has become a recurring subject of academic research and of television formats in South Korea, Australia, the United Kingdom, and Nigeria.

Key fact	Detail
Definition	A man who primarily takes care of the home and family while his spouse earns a living outside the home¹
Indonesian survey	100 respondents (50 men, 50 women) in Yogyakarta and Ponorogo; the trend of house husbands was found to be increasing²
Leader attitudes	Religious, community, and government leaders in the study generally did not object to husbands taking on domestic and parenting tasks²
Korean reality show	Mr. House Husband (살림하는 남자들), KBS2, first aired November 8, 2016, observing six men who do both housekeeping and parenting³
Recent ratings	Nielsen Korea nationwide ratings for individual 2026 episodes ranged from 3.1% to 7.1%⁴^•⁵
Australian drama	House Husbands, Nine Network, produced by Playmaker Media, 2011–2017, following four stay-at-home fathers⁶
Early sitcom	His and Hers (Yorkshire Television, 1970) cast Ronald Lewis as a freelance writer who stays home while his wife works⁷

Definition and social context

Dictionaries define the house husband symmetrically with the housewife: a man who stays at home and cleans the house, takes care of the children, and so on, while his partner goes out to work.¹ A 2024 study in the Indonesian journal Al-Aḥwāl defines the house husband as the involvement of a husband or father in household and parenting tasks, and links the phenomenon to the rising participation of women in economic activity.²

The Indonesian study, which combined a survey of 100 respondents with in-depth interviews and focus group discussions, found that the trend of house husbands is increasing and that patriarchal culture, which assigns domestic and nurturing tasks exclusively to women, is becoming less relevant in the communities studied. Religious, community, and government leaders generally did not object to husbands participating in domestic and parenting tasks. At the same time, most respondents still believed the leader of the family is the male or husband, except in specific situations, such as when the husband is seriously ill, that necessitate a reversal of roles.²

Television portrayals

South Korea. The most prominent screen treatment of the role is Mr. House Husband (살림하는 남자들), a KBS2 reality-variety program that premiered on November 8, 2016, and observes six men who do both housekeeping and parenting.³ Season 1 ran from November 2016 to February 2017 with 14 episodes; for season 2 the format changed, and the cast members' recordings were observed and narrated by two hosts.⁸ The show's stated premise is that men doing housework is no longer unusual, and that having men share the load of housework is a way to stabilize the family in a highly competitive society.⁹ It became a long-running fixture of KBS2's weekend lineup: Nielsen Korea nationwide ratings for individual 2026 episodes included 7.1% for the 401st episode in July, 5.7% for an episode featuring the singer Chuu as special MC, 4.4% for a January broadcast with a peak of 6.5%, and 3.1% for an August episode with a peak of 4.5%.⁵^•⁴^•¹⁰ The program passed its 400th episode in 2025.¹¹ A KBS management evaluation report cited the program, alongside the long-running music show Immortal Songs, as reconfirming the standing of KBS entertainment programs.¹²

Australia. House Husbands is a warm-hearted drama produced by Playmaker Media for the Nine Network, with production years listed as 2011 to 2017 across five seasons. It follows Lewis, Mark, Kane, and Justin, four stay-at-home fathers of different generations who take care of their children while their partners go out to work, beginning on the first day of the school term.⁶ The first episode aired on the Nine Network on September 2, 2012.¹³ The cast included Rhys Muldoon, Firass Dirani, Gary Sweet, Gyton Grantley, Natalie Saleeba, Julia Morris, and Anna McGahan.⁶

United Kingdom. The role-reversal premise appeared on British television as early as 1970 in His and Hers, a Yorkshire Television sitcom starring Ronald Lewis as Rupert Sherwin, a freelance writer content to stay home as the house husband while his wife Kay, an executive accountant played by Sue Lloyd, commutes to work with briefcase and bowler hat. The show was replaced in the London area by repeats of On the Buses before its second series ended, and when it returned in 1972 the role-reversal premise was largely overlooked; Barbara Murray took over the role of Kay after Lloyd declined to reprise it.⁷

Nigeria. House Husband is a Nigerian drama broadcast on EbonyLife TV, following a married pair who swap roles when the husband loses his job at the same time that his wife lands one. A later series of the same name, listed with four seasons and starring Patience Ozokwo, Jennifer Eliogu, Oge Okoye, and Mike Godson, follows an unemployed young man who marries a rich woman and agrees to stay at home while she works, an arrangement that does not sit well with their families or society at large.¹⁴^•¹⁵

Research on gender and audience reception

Scholarship on Korean male-caregiving television has examined whether such programs change attitudes toward domestic labor. A 2018 audience study of The Return of Superman (KBS2, 2013–), a show in which celebrity fathers care for their children unassisted for 48 hours, found that both male and female viewers were skeptical of the show's portrayal of reality and not hopeful about the feasibility of achieving gender equality in housework in their own everyday lives; the authors concluded it was premature to read the show's popularity as evidence of gender equality.¹⁶

Related work analyzes the cultural framing of the domestic man. A 2022 critical discourse analysis of the 2005 Korean film Mr. Housewife (Miseuteo Jubu Kwizeuwang), by Beste Alpay Jeong of Hanyang University, examined a full-time stay-at-home father whose public fame as a quiz-show winner forces viewers to rationalize his domestic role, illustrating how the home has been culturally constructed in Korean middle-class families as a place of rest for men rather than a site of masculine practice.¹⁷ The JustWatch synopsis of Mr. House Husband makes the same connection from the production side, noting that many Koreans were giving up on marriage because of the pressure to make a living and framing men's sharing of housework as a family-stabilizing response.⁹

The Indonesian findings qualify the picture of social acceptance. While leaders generally did not object to men performing domestic and parenting tasks, the persistence of the belief that the husband leads the family, except in situations such as serious illness, shows that acceptance of the house husband's tasks does not by itself overturn the perceived hierarchy of the household.²

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › Unscripted, reality, and web-native series › Celebrity, family, lifestyle, and court reality series › Lifestyle, dating, and docusoaps › Celebrity and family docusoaps › Premiered 2019 to 2026

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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House Husband

Definition and social context

Television portrayals

Research on gender and audience reception

References

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