Homemaking is mainly an American and Canadian term for the management of a home, otherwise known as housework, housekeeping, housewifery, home economics 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 househusband), or a stay-at-home dad or stay-at-home mom.
Historically, the role of homemaker was often assumed by women. However, 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 (like a house cleaner). The term "homemaker", 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.
History Historically, one person in a spousal arrangement serving as the sole homemaker was rare. Women almost always worked alongside their husbands in the fields or assisting them with their trade. Aristocratic women typically had servants or slaves to do most of the manual labor.
Ancient Greece Athens was one of the few societies in history prior to the nineteenth century that idealized the role of wives as dependent homemakers rather than as work mates for their husbands.
Partly in an effort to curb the influence of powerful families, Athenian reformers in during and after the sixth century BCE cut wives off not just from their parents, but the larger world. Women were expected to focus all their attention on taking care of the house and bearing children. In wealthier families, this was taken to an extreme—women were not allowed out of their homes and inner courtyards. This also became a sign of wealth, indicating that a family had enough money that their women did not need to lift a finger. In other cases, aristocratic women were allowed out in the company of male relatives. However, lower-class women continued to work as laundresses, seamstresses, bakers, and innkeepers.Coontz, Stephanie. (2005). Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage. New York: Viking Press, Penguin Group Inc. pp. 125–29, .
19th century 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.
20th century 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.
21st century
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.
In a 2008 article, social scientists Susan L. Brown and Sayaka Kawamura reported that the unequal distribution in housework was attributed mainly to time availability. They concluded: "wives typically work fewer hours than their husbands, [so] they have more time available to perform household tasks."
Housekeeping Housekeeping by the homemaker is the care and control of property, ensuring its maintenance, proper use and appearance. In a private home a maid or housekeeper is sometimes employed to do some of the housekeeping. Housework is work done by the act of housekeeping. Some housekeeping is housecleaning and some housekeeping is home chores. Home chores are housework that needs to be done at regular intervals.Gove, Philip et al. 1961. Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language Unabridged. Springfield, Massachusetts: G & C Merriam Company Housekeeping includes the budget and control of expenditures, preparing meals and buying food, paying the heat bill, and cleaning the house.Ansley, Clark et al. 1935. The Columbia Encyclopedia in One Volume. Morningside Heights, NY: Columbia University Press.
Cooking
Most modern-day houses contain sanitary facilities and a means of preparing food. A kitchen is a room or part of a room used by the homemaker for cooking, food preparation and food preservation. In the West, a modern kitchen is typically equipped with a stove, an oven, a sink with hot and cold running water, a refrigerator and kitchen cabinets. Many homemakers use a microwave oven, a dishwasher and other electric appliances like blender and convection cooker and automatic appliances like rice cookers. The main function of a kitchen is cooking or preparing food but it may also be used for dining for a casual meal such as lunch.
Cooking is the process of preparing food, making, selecting, measuring and combining ingredients in an ordered procedure for producing safe and edible food. The process encompasses a vast range of methods, tools and combinations of ingredients to alter the flavor, appearance, texture, or digestibility of food. Factors affecting the outcome include the variability of ingredients, ambient conditions, tools, and the skill of the individual doing the actual cooking.
The diversity of cooking worldwide is a reflection of the aesthetic, agricultural, economic, cultural, social and religious diversity of people across the globe. Applying heat to a food usually, though not always, chemically transforms it, thus changing its flavor, texture, consistency, appearance, and nutritional properties. Methods of cooking that involve the boiling of liquid in a receptacle have been practised at least since the 10th millennium BC, with the introduction of pottery.
Cleaning
House cleaning by the homemaker is the systematic process of making a home neat and clean. This may be applied more broadly than just an individual home, such as a metaphor for a similar "clean up" process applied elsewhere such as at a hotel or as a procedural reform. In the process of house cleaning general cleaning activities are completed, such as disposing of rubbish, storing of belongings in regular places, cleaning dirty surfaces, dusting and vacuuming. The details of this are various and complicated enough that many books have been published on the subject. How-to sites on the internet have many articles on house cleaning. Tools include the vacuum cleaner, broom and mop. Supplies such as cleaning solutions and sponges are sold in grocery stores and elsewhere. Professional cleaners can be hired for less frequent or specialist tasks such as cleaning blinds, rugs, and sofas. Professional services are also offered for the basic tasks. Safety is a consideration because some cleaning products are toxic and some cleaning tasks are physically demanding. Green cleaning refers to cleaning without causing pollution or chemicals that may cause bodily harm. The history of house cleaning has links to the advancement of technology.
Outdoor housecleaning chores include removing leaves from rain gutters, washing windows, sweeping doormats, cleaning the pool, putting away lawn furniture, and taking out the trash.Smallin, Donna. 2006. Cleaning Plain & Simple. Storey Publishing, North Adams, MA.
Laundry
Laundry refers to the act of washing clothing and linens, the place where that washing is done, and/or that which needs to be, is being, or has been laundered. Various chemicals may be used to increase the solvent power of water, such as the compounds in soaproot or yucca-root used by Native American tribes. Soap, a compound made from lye (from wood-ash) and fat, is an ancient and very common laundry aid. Modern washing machines typically use powdered or liquid laundry detergent in place of more traditional soap. Once clean, the clothes are dried.