Homemaking

Homemaking is mainly an American and Canadian term for the management of a home, otherwise known as housework, housekeeping, housewifery or household management. It is the act of overseeing the organizational, day-to-day operations of a house or estate, and the managing of other domestic concerns. A person in charge of the homemaking, who is not employed outside the home, in the US and Canada, is called a homemaker, a term for a housewife or a stay-at-home dad. Historically, the role of homemaker was often assumed by women. The term "homemaker", however, may also refer to a social worker who manages a household during the incapacity of the housewife or househusband. Home health workers assume the role of homemakers when caring for elderly individuals. This includes preparing meals, giving baths, and any duties the person in need cannot perform for themselves.

Homemaking can be the full-time responsibility of one spouse, partner, or parent, shared with children or extended family, or shared or traded between spouses/partners as one or both work outside the home. It can also be outsourced partially or completely to paid help. In previous decades, there were a number of mandatory courses available for students to learn the skills of homemaking. In high school, courses included cooking, nutrition, home economics, family and consumer science (FACS), and food and cooking hygiene. ^{[citation needed]}

In North America, early 19th-century ideals required homemaking be the responsibility of the woman; "the wife is properly supposed to be the light and centre of the home." Traditional wives who stayed home and did not work for pay were required by social ideals to create and maintain a peaceful space to provide to her husband and children. For women in a pre-modern environment, "it is the duty and privilege and solemn responsibility, which make this art of home-making more interesting and important to her than any other art in the world." Author of these statements, Annie Swan was not alone in the late 1800s viewpoint that women were encouraged, if not required, to maintain the home solely themselves. In 1875, Harper's Bazaar published an article outlining the duties of a housewife and the esteemed respect those duties deserve: "but if one only staid to think how countless and how onerous those duties really are, more respect would be paid to the faithful effort to perform them, and an added reverence extended to the mother who is also the housekeeper." Harper's Bazaar recognizes that women do the majority of the work within the home, pointing out that the work is detailed and at many times, difficult.

The 20th century began with similar homemaking roles as the 19th; however, the century concluded with a much different perception. In the late 1990s, marriage consisted in most cases of both wife and husband participating in homemaking. Darlene Piña and Vern Bengtson who are anthropologists and professors at the University of Southern California, extensively researched marriage dynamics and household labor in the late twentieth century. They concluded that "all wives benefit equally by their husbands' greater involvement in household labor." The division of labor within the home promotes a healthy relationship between husband and wife. Concluding, that likelihood of increased happiness within marriage is vastly improved when homemaking is shared with the husband. West and Zimmerman, concluded an analysis of over 487 couples and found that "women were rewarded for performing feminine behaviors, such as housework, whereas men receive positive reinforcement for engaging in masculine tasks, such as breadwinning."

In contrast, a study performed by Hochschild in 1989, concluded that even when wives contributed more than 50% of the household income they often still performed more household labor than their husbands. Hochschild's study directly debunked the previous theory that women performed housework because they contributed significantly less to household income. Instead, the results of the study indicated that even in marriage dynamics where women contributed more than half of the household income, they still completed the vast majority of homemaking tasks.

Married women who are economically and emotionally dependent on their husbands are less likely to report the division of household labor as unfair. This significant group of married women felt that household labor reinforced their female gender identity and connection to femininity.^{[citation needed]}

Sex and gender continue to shape the division of household responsibilities in the United States in the twenty-first century. According to the 2018 American Time Use Survey, 84 percent of women and 69 percent of men reported that they spent some time performing household duties, which included "housework, cooking, lawn care, or household management." Women reported spending an average of 2.6 hours a day on household activities, and men 2.0 hours. On a surveyed day, 49% percent of women and 20% of men reported doing housework.

Men and women's perception of household responsibilities differ. Pew Research Center's 2014 Religious Landscape Study found that fathers were more likely than mothers to say that chores were evenly split between both partners (56% vs. 46%). When asked, 50% of mothers reported they handled more responsibilities around the house than their partners; only 12% of fathers reported they did more household tasks. Despite this difference in perception, a majority of married U.S. adults (56%) said that sharing household chores as "very important" to a successful marriage.