Nag The Ones You Love - It’s A Family Affair, UF Study Shows

May 6, 2002

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Intimacy breeds contempt when it comes to nagging, says a University of Florida researcher, who found the practice widespread in families.

Loved ones cajole, pester, whine, hound or nag each other because close bonds allow them to get away with behavior that would not wear elsewhere, said Diana Boxer, a UF linguistics professor whose study appeared in the February issue of the Journal of Pragmatics.

“Nagging is prevalent in the family because that’s the one sphere where we let our guard down and do away with all the polite devices of typical suburban social interactions,” she said. “When we’re trying to make friends and develop or sustain relationships, we don’t do things like nagging.”

Often centering on household chores, nagging is usually done by the “cleaning boss,” the person responsible for seeing that things run smoothly in the household, the study found. This person may have status, but they don’t have a lot of power, in contrast to those who give orders on the job, Boxer said.

“Generally, you don’t find nagging in the workplace because people whose role it is to carry out certain tasks either carry them out or run the risk of getting fired,” she said.

Nagging begins with a simple request, such as, “Make sure you take the clothes out of the dryer as soon as it buzzes,” Boxer said. When the request is repeated, it becomes a reminder – “Did you hear me?” And when the reminder is repeated – often in exasperation – it becomes nagging, as in “Never mind, I’ll do it myself!”

“The focus of nagging is typically something important to the nagger but not important to the person being nagged,” she said.

For the class project, graduate and undergraduate students in Boxer’s socio-linguistics classes collected samples of comments they considered nagging from their families while home for Thanksgiving weekend. About three-quarters of the students were female.

Chores and errands accounted for about 43 percent of the 70 examples of nagging the students brought back. Asking someone not to do something or to stop doing something made up another 26 percent. Most of the remaining episodes involved requests to telephone someone.

Women did the nagging in two-thirds of the cases. Only six of the 70 sequences involved men nagging women, and it was often about non-domestic issues, such as with one husband asking his wife not to slam the car door..

“I think there’s a stereotype of a nag as a wrinkled, unhappy, older woman,” Boxer said. “Even the examples used in dictionary definitions are always female: ‘She’s a good wife, but she does nag so,’ or ‘She nagged her husband at every opportunity.’”

Men who engage in the practice get labeled differently, Boxer said. “When men do it, it’s not considered nagging, it’s hounding,” she said. “And when children do it, it’s considered something else entirely – pestering.”

And while the word nag has the negative meaning of an inferior or unsound horse, hound refers to a “useful hunting dog,” she said.

The study also found nagging was most commonly done by mothers to sons, possibly because daughters take household chores more seriously, Boxer said. “We know that traditionally, at least, men don’t place as much importance on domestic organization as women do,” she said.

Roommates might nag about taking out the garbage or leaving dirty dishes in the sink, but it is less in-your-face than with family members, she said.

“There’s a kind of a delicate dance of negotiation that goes on where you feel funny nagging because you’re not really intimate with each other,” said Boxer, who also has studied complaining and conversational joking.

To avoid nagging, she recommends establishing the right relationship with a roommate or spouse at the outset. “Consciously try and listen to a request the first time and ascertain if it’s a valid request,” she said. “If it isn’t, discuss it. And if you’re being ignored, bring it up.”

With youngsters, Boxer advises developing a philosophy of childrearing in which there is mutual respect for carrying out wishes.

“Even though nagging has been known to lead to divorce, it rarely results in disowning children,” she said.