No good deed goes unpunished.

That famous phrase from Clare Booth Luce apparently applies to married men, according to a new study that finds men who help with the housework tend to have less sex.

The University of Washington research, published Wednesday in the American Sociological Review, suggests that heterosexual couples have more “sexual encounters” when each partner takes on traditional gender roles.

“Where the male is doing the male tasks and the female is doing the female tasks, those are the couples (who) are having more sex,” UW Associate Professor of Sociology and study co-author Julia Brines said in an interview with The Toronto Star.

You can find a PDF copy of the study at the bottom of Brines’ UW page.

The study had some other interesting findings. For instance, twice as much time is spent on “female” chores (34 hours) each week than on tasks more typically considered “male” (17 hours).

Couples who participated in the study reported having about five “sexual encounters.”

Read more at Yahoo! News