Men are more than twice as likely as women to do none of the Thanksgiving cooking and cleaning

Jamie BallardData Journalist
November 22, 2021, 6:00 PM GMT+0

Most Americans say they plan to celebrate Thanksgiving this year, but a new YouGov poll suggests that not everyone will be pitching in to cook or clean on Thanksgiving. Men are particularly likely to say they’ll leave making and cleaning up after the meal to others.

Seven in 10 American adults (70%) say they plan to celebrate Thanksgiving, while about one in eight (12%) say they won’t be celebrating and the remainder (18%) are unsure. Americans under 30 (60%) are less likely than older Americans to say they plan to celebrate Thanksgiving this year.

Among people who say they will be celebrating Thanksgiving, four in five (82%) say their plan is to have a home-cooked Thanksgiving meal. Much fewer Americans will have other kinds of Thanksgiving meals: a pre-made meal to eat at home (6%), going out to a restaurant (4%), or eating restaurant food at home (2%).

Who will be doing the work for home-cooked Thanksgiving meals? More often, the answer is women, not men. Among Americans who expect to enjoy a home-cooked meal for Thanksgiving, women (27%) are more likely than men (16%) to say they typically do all of the Thanksgiving cooking. About one in five women (21%) but just 8% of men say they do most of the Thanksgiving cooking, but that other people help. And one quarter of men (25%) and 11% of women say that they do none of the work to make the Thanksgiving feast happen.

These findings are very similar to a YouGov poll last year around the same question of Thanksgiving cooking. Then the self-reported workload wasn’t quite as skewed toward women: 48% of women and 31% of men said they would do all or most of the cooking for their 2020 Thanksgiving home-cooked feast.

Women also are more likely than men to say that they typically do more of the clean-up when Thanksgiving dinner is done. Around one in five (21%) women and 13% of men say they do all of the Thanksgiving dinner clean-up. Only 8% of women but 18% of men say they don’t do any of the clean-up work.

See the toplines and crosstabs from this YouGov poll

Related: What Americans think about Thanksgiving foods and traditions

Methodology: 1,000 U.S. citizens, aged 18 and over, were surveyed for this poll on November 9 - 15, 2021. Respondents were selected from YouGov’s opt-in Internet panel using sample matching. A random sample (stratified by gender, age, race, education, geographic region, and voter registration) was selected from the 2018 American Community Study. Voter registration was imputed from the November 2018 Current Population Survey Registration and Voting Supplement. The sample was weighted based on gender, age, race, education, news interest, and 2020 Presidential vote (or non-vote). The margin of error for the entire sample is approximately 5%.