Listen guys, we women NEVER moan. We just point things out.(Features)

Byline: JANET STREET-PORTER

WHEN I read that the average couple has seven rows a day, I thought, 'Is that all?' I'm an expert -- usually participating in three arguments before leaving home in the morning.

Living with someone in such close quarters is not a natural state -- in the Stone Age, your hunter-gatherer partner would have been out of the hut at first light, foraging for food, tracking his quarry and trapping anything that moved. He would not have returned until he was successful.

Now, they lie in bed whimpering about feeling tired and anxious about work, don't turn their mobile phone alarms off at weekends, hog the bathroom, can't load the dishwasher correctly and have no idea that the washing machine operates on anything other than the hot wash.

They don't even manage the modern version of hunter-gathering once a week -- the supermarket shop -- to any decent level of efficiency, regularly losing your carefully compiled list in their multi-pocketed combat-style shorts before they've parked the car.

Last Saturday, mine came back with a bag of compost and a pair of nasty blue rubber swimming shoes that were 'on offer', but no cooking oil.

THESE days, you rarely hear anyone saying 'we've been married 50 years and never had a cross word' in the way people did a few decades ago. Were these marriages of the war years really so happy and harmonious? I doubt it, but unlike our grandparents, my generation has always gone out to work -- which gives us plenty to moan about. Apparently the biggest reason for arguing is because the other person appears not to be listening. I can verify that. No matter how many times a week I tell my partner what we have planned, he starts every day by saying 'remind me what we're doing tonight/tomorrow/this weekend'.

His brain operates on another waveband to mine: Radio Bloke. It's full up with the little gadgets he's secretly ordered on the internet, which I regularly have to go to the post office and collect. Recent examples include a plastic rod with a brush on the end for catching spiders, and a pair of repulsive waterproof trousers.

Yesterday, he absent-mindedly asked: 'Which way do you go around London to get to Surbiton?' This is the man who went to Heathrow via St Albans. Even the sat nav had a row with him. According to researchers, the next most popular reasons for a row -- after being ignored -- are money and laziness.

I don't agree. Men don't even acknowledge the word 'lazy' exists, so it's pointless arguing with them over it. They prefer to talk about their 'different priorities' as in 'I'll get around to that (ie mending the radio/washing the car/gluing a vase back together) in my own time. Men's time is not women's time. It is infinitely more flexible -- tasks cannot be rushed or allocated a certain time slot.

Oxford University has just conducted a comprehensive study into the amount of time men and women spend on housework, published in the journal Sociology. They found that over the years, as more women work, men have (very slowly) done more to help around the home.

Sadly, at the current rate, the scientists have calculated it will take until 2050 for men to do as much as women. Back in the Sixties, women did six hours of housework a day on average, while men got away with just 90 minutes. Now, women average four hours and 40 minutes on housework and childcare, while men manage two hours and 28 minutes.

The reason why progress is so slow comes back to the internet. Men spend hours looking at screens in case anyone is trying to contact them, or in tracking that box set of Extreme Fishing they've ordered on Amazon. Apparently one of the reasons men aren't doing more housework is because certain jobs are still viewed as too 'feminine', such as baking.

I don't agree. My partner makes an excellent cake, but we'll have a row about the way he chucks flour everywhere that I have to clean up. He then resorts to that key phrase that men use (100 per cent guaranteed to trigger off a major row): 'stop moaning'. Women don't moan -- we point things out.