If there is one thing on which many working mothers agree, it is that their partners do not pull their weight on the domestic front.

But research to be published this week reveals that men are being unfairly accused and working women are advancing the myth of the "useless man" so they can feel more feminine. "Working women who provide the majority of the household's income to the family continue to articulate themselves as the ones who 'see' household messes and needs as a way to retain claims to an element of a traditional feminine identity," said Dr Rebecca Meisenbach, whose research paper, The Female Breadwinner, will be published this week in the journal Sex Roles.

But Meisenbach said the trend of the female high achiever and the male slacker is a tall story that women tell each other to compensate for the fact that most career-orientated women feel an "overwhelming sense of guilt" over their role and less of a mother and a wife.

"These women are struggling with the intersections of their status as the breadwinner and other gendered societal expectations," she said. "By highlighting stories of how men have to be told or asked to do specific chores in the home, these female breadwinners are making sure they still fit gender boundaries of a wife as someone who manages the home and children.

"By directing the housework done by their husbands, they maintain a sense of control over the traditionally feminine sphere of the home," she added. "This path of expressing control of and responsibility for both home and paid work may be essential for working mothers to manage competing discourses of ideal worker and intensive mothering."