housework essay

Essay on Household Chores

Students are often asked to write an essay on Household Chores in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Household Chores

Introduction to household chores.

Household chores are tasks we do to keep our homes clean and organized. These tasks include cleaning, cooking, washing clothes, and many more. Everyone in the family can help with these tasks. Doing chores is important because it teaches responsibility and helps keep our homes nice and tidy.

Types of Household Chores

There are many types of household chores. Some chores, like dusting and sweeping, are done to keep the house clean. Others, like cooking and washing dishes, are done to prepare meals. We also do chores like laundry and taking out the trash.

Benefits of Doing Chores

Doing chores has many benefits. It teaches us how to take care of our things. It also helps us learn to work as a team when we do chores with others. Plus, doing chores can make us feel good because we are helping our family.

In conclusion, household chores are important tasks that help keep our homes clean and organized. Doing these chores can teach us many valuable skills, like responsibility and teamwork. So, let’s all do our part in keeping our homes clean!

250 Words Essay on Household Chores

What are household chores.

Household chores are tasks we do to keep our homes clean and tidy. They include activities like washing dishes, cleaning the house, cooking, doing laundry, and taking care of the garden.

Importance of Household Chores

Household chores are very important. They help us keep our homes clean and safe. A clean home is healthy and comfortable to live in. Chores also teach us responsibility and discipline. When we complete our chores, we learn to take care of our things and spaces.

Sharing Chores in a Family

In a family, everyone should help with chores. This way, the work is not too much for one person. Parents can do the harder tasks, while children can help with simpler ones. For example, children can help set the table or tidy up their toys.

Learning New Skills

Doing chores can also teach us new skills. For example, cooking can teach us about different foods and how to prepare them. Laundry can teach us how to take care of our clothes so they last longer.

The Joy of Completing Chores

Even though chores can sometimes feel boring, there is joy in completing them. When we finish a task, we can feel proud of our work. We can see the results immediately, like a clean room or a cooked meal.

In conclusion, household chores are an important part of our daily lives. They keep our homes clean, teach us responsibility and new skills, and can even bring us joy.

500 Words Essay on Household Chores

Introduction.

Household chores are tasks that we do to keep our homes neat and tidy. These chores include cleaning, cooking, washing dishes, doing laundry, and many more. They are part of our daily life and play a vital role in maintaining a healthy and organized environment.

There are many types of household chores. Cleaning chores involve sweeping and mopping the floors, dusting furniture, and cleaning windows. Kitchen chores include cooking, washing dishes, and cleaning the kitchen. Laundry chores involve washing, drying, and folding clothes. Outdoor chores might include gardening, mowing the lawn, or washing the car. Each chore has its importance and helps in keeping the house clean and organized.

Benefits of Household Chores

Doing household chores has many benefits. First, it helps to keep our surroundings clean and hygienic, which is good for our health. Second, it teaches us responsibility and discipline as we need to complete these tasks regularly. Third, chores can be a great way to exercise and stay fit. For example, sweeping the floor or mowing the lawn can be a good workout. Lastly, doing chores can also help us to learn new skills like cooking or gardening, which can be useful in our life.

Sharing Household Chores

Household chores should not be the responsibility of one person. They should be shared among all family members. This not only divides the work but also helps in building teamwork and cooperation. For example, parents can cook and clean, while children can help in setting the table or washing dishes. This way, everyone contributes to the household work and it becomes less burdensome for one person.

Chores as a Learning Experience

Doing household chores can be a great learning experience, especially for children. It teaches them the importance of cleanliness and hygiene. It also instills a sense of responsibility and discipline in them. They learn to manage their time effectively as they need to balance their chores and other activities like studies and play. Moreover, they learn practical skills like cooking, cleaning, and gardening which are essential life skills.

In conclusion, household chores are an integral part of our daily life. They help in maintaining cleanliness and order in our homes. They teach us valuable lessons about responsibility and teamwork. Moreover, they provide us with an opportunity to learn new skills. So, instead of seeing them as a burden, we should embrace them as a part of our routine and contribute our bit in making our homes a better place to live in.

(Word count: 500)

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

Essay on Housewife
Essay on How Can A Person Benefit From Philosophy
Essay on Housing

Apart from these, you can look at all the essays by clicking here .

Happy studying!

One Comment

Definitely, these sharing of household chores equally including washing dishes, laundry, cleaning, cooking etc.are very important so that the wife ,the lady of the house can get time for herself ( and her own parents). Women already work double if they are working professionals.If working to help husband financially or to make themselves economically independent, husband must help his wife in household chores equally including washing dishes, laundry, cleaning, cooking etc.esp.if she is helping him in working financially.

Finding the Value of Housework

Can housework be anything other than drudgery? Maybe part of the problem is that we consistently devalue unpaid work.

What can you say about housework? From the perspective of today’s career-minded men and women, scrubbing floors and doing dishes often looks like drudgery, a distraction from more important and fulfilling paid labor. But a 1995 paper by family science scholars Nancy Rollins Ahlander and Kathleen Slaugh Bahr suggests a different take, elevating housework’s status by looking at its moral dimensions .

Ahlander and Bahr write that “housework” became a thing starting in the mid-1700s with the rise of factories, wage work, and urbanization. While many women worked in the flourishing factories, a growing gender ideology—particularly among middle- and upper-class whites—held that only men should work outside the home.

The phrase “cleanliness is next to godliness,” which had originally referred to being morally clean, was now applied to housework. “Cleaning became a moral duty, and it was not uncommon to judge a woman’s moral state by the orderliness of her house,” Ahlander and Bahr write.

In the 1950s, a new concept for understanding housework emerged: the division of labor. Sociologist Talcott Parsons argued that women were naturally more suited to the expressive work of caring for a family, making the gendered division of public and private work efficient and inevitable. More recently, some feminist scholars have framed housework in terms of power relations. Given the low status of household tasks, they argue, men use their greater social and institutional power to foist them off on women.

Ahlander and Bahr argue that all these approaches suffer from blinkered thinking, reflecting an individualistic, economically oriented view of valuable work.

They advocate for a whole different way of approaching housework, one that brings back a moral dimension, but without the baggage of gender roles. When it comes to children’s chores, they note, many modern advice-givers argue that “identities, emotional ties to family members, and acceptance of kinship obligation grow out of common participation in the day-to-day essential activities of shared family life.” Yet, while housework is seen as fostering positive, prosocial behavior among children, it’s often dismissed as drudgery when adults do it.

Get Our Newsletter

Get your fix of JSTOR Daily’s best stories in your inbox each Thursday.

In fact, Ahlander and Bahr argue, in many ways housework can have elements of a calling —work that combines activity and personal character, helping to bond a person to a community. Thus, one father who was a participant in a 1989 study noted that he “would sometimes derive pleasure from cleaning the bathroom or picking up a sock if he looked at it as an act of caring for his family.”

In Ahlander and Bahr’s formulation, the moral dimension of housework is less about the work itself, and more about the work’s purpose. Labor done in service of one’s family—particularly when all family members contribute and recognize each other’s contributions—can be more than a distraction from our “real” work.

JSTOR is a digital library for scholars, researchers, and students. JSTOR Daily readers can access the original research behind our articles for free on JSTOR.

The Metaphysical Story of Chiropractic

A Bodhisattva for Japanese Women

Support JSTOR Daily

Family Work

The daily work of families—the ordinary hands-on labor of sustaining life—has the power to bind us together.

By Kathleen Slaugh Bahr and Cheri A. Loveless in the Spring 2000 Issue

Illustrations by Rich Lillash

I grew up in a little town in Northern Utah, the oldest daughter in a family of 13 children. We lived on a small two-and-a-half-acre farm with a large garden, fruit trees, and a milk cow. We children loved helping our dad plant the garden, following behind him like little quail as he cut the furrow with his hoe and we dropped in the seeds. Weeding was less exciting, but it had to be done. I was never very good at milking the cow. Fortunately, my brothers shared that task.

In the autumn, we all helped with the harvest. I especially loved picking and bottling the fruit. It required the hands of all 13 of us plus Mom and Dad. We children swarmed through the trees picking the fruit. My dad would fire up an old camp stove where we heated the water to scald the fruit. My mother supervised putting the fruit in jars, adding the sugar, putting on the lids. My youngest sister remembers feeling very important because she had hands small enough to turn the peach halves if they fell into the jars upside downand they usually did. When the harvest was complete, I loved looking at the freezer full of vegetables and all the jars of fruit. They looked like jewels to me.

Caring for our large family kept all of us busy most of the time. Mother was the overseer of the inside work, and Dad the outside, but I also remember seeing my father sweep floors, wash dishes, and cook meals when his help was needed. As children we often worked together, but not all at the same task. While we worked we talked, sang, quarreled, made good memories, and learned what it meant to be family members, good sons or daughters and fathers or mothers, good Americans, good Christians.

As a young child, I didn’t know there was anything unusual about this life. My father and mother read us stories about their parents and grandparents, and it was clear that both my father and mother had worked hard as children. Working hard was what families did, what they always had done. Their work was “family work,” the everyday, ordinary, hands-on labor of sustaining life that cannot be ignored—feeding one another, clothing one another, cleaning and beautifying ourselves and our surroundings. It included caring for the sick and tending to the tasks of daily life for those who could not do it for themselves. It was through this shared work that we showed our love and respect for each other—and work was also the way we learned to love and respect each other.

“Many social and political forces continue the devaluation of family work.”

When I went to graduate school, I learned that not everyone considered this pattern of family life ideal. At the university, much of what I read and heard belittled family work. Feminist historians reminded us students that men had long been liberated from farm and family work; now women were also to be liberated. One professor taught that assigning the tasks of nurturing children primarily to women was the root of women’s oppression. I was told that women must be liberated from these onerous family tasks so that they might be free to work for money.

Today many social and political forces continue the devaluation of family work, encouraging the belief that family work is the province of the exploited and the powerless. Chief among these forces is the idea that because money is power, one’s salary is the true indication of one’s worth. Another is that the important work of the world is visible and takes place in the public sphere—in offices, factories, and government buildings. According to this ideology, if one wants to make a difference in the world, one must do it through participation in the world of paid work.

Some have tried to convince us of the importance of family work by calling attention to its economic value, declaring, as in one recent study, that a stay-at-home mom’s work is worth more than half a million dollars. 1 But I believe assigning economic value to household work does not translate into an increase in its status or power. In fact, devaluing family work to its mere market equivalent may even have the opposite effect. People who see the value of family work only in terms of the economic value of processes that yield measurable products—washed dishes, baked bread, swept floors, clothed children—miss what some call the “invisible household production” that occurs at the same time, but which is, in fact, more important to family-building and character development than the economic products. Here lies the real power of family work—its potential to transform lives, to forge strong families, to build strong communities. It is the power to quietly, effectively urge hearts and minds toward a oneness known only in Zion.

Illustration of a family picking apples together.

Back to Eden

Family work actually began with Adam and Eve. As best we can discern, they lived a life of relative ease in the Garden of Eden. They “dressed” and “kept” it ( Moses 3:15 ), but it isn’t clear what that entailed since the plants were already flourishing. There were no weeds, and Adam and Eve had no children to prod or cajole into watering or harvesting, if such tasks needed to be done

When they exercised their agency and partook of the fruit, Adam and Eve left their peaceful, labor-free existence and began one of hard work. They were each given a specific area of responsibility, yet they helped each other in their labors. Adam brought forth the fruit of the earth, and Eve worked along with him ( Moses 5:1 ). Eve bore children, and Adam joined her in teaching them ( Moses 5:12 ). They were not given a choice about these two lifetime labors; these were commandments ( Moses 4:22–25 ).

Traditionally, many have considered this need to labor as a curse, but a close reading of the account suggests otherwise. God did not curse Adam; He cursed the ground to bring forth thorns and thistles ( Moses 4:24 ), which in turn forced Adam to labor. And Adam was told, “Cursed shall be the ground for thy sake ” ( vs. 23 , emphasis added). In other words, the hard work of eating one’s bread “by the sweat of thy face” ( vs. 25 ) was meant to be a blessing.

According to the New Testament, the work of bearing and rearing children was also intended as a blessing. Writes the Apostle Paul: “[Eve] shall be saved in childbearing, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety” ( 1 Tim. 2:15 , emphasis added). Significantly, Joseph Smith corrected the verse to read, “ They shall be saved in childbearing” ( JST, 1 Tim. 2:15 , emphasis added), indicating that more than the sparing of Eve’s physical life was at issue here. Both Adam and Eve would be privileged to return to their Heavenly Father through the labor of bringing forth and nurturing their offspring.

According to scripture, then, the Lord blessed Adam and Eve (and their descendants) with two kinds of labor that would, by the nature of the work itself, help guarantee their salvation. Both of these labors—tilling the earth for food and laboring to rear children—are family work, work that sustains and nurtures members of a family from one day to the next. But there is more to consider. These labors literally could not be performed in Eden. These are the labors that ensure physical survival; thus, they became necessary only when mankind left a life-sustaining garden and entered a sphere where life was quickly overcome by death unless it was upheld by steady, continual, hard work. Undoubtedly the Lord knew that other activities associated with mortality—like study and learning or developing one’s talents—would also be important. But His initial emphasis, in the form of a commandment, was on that which had the power to bring His children back into His presence, and that was family work.

Since Eden many variations and distortions of the Lord’s original design for earthly labor have emerged. Still, the general pattern has remained dominant among many peoples of the earth, including families who lived in the United States at the turn of the last century. Mothers and fathers, teenagers and young children cared for their land, their animals, and for each other with their own hands. Their work was difficult, and it filled almost every day of their lives. But they recognized their family work as essential, and it was not without its compensations. It was social and was often carried out at a relaxed pace and in a playful spirit.

“The wrenching apart of work and home-life is one of the great themes in social history.”

Yet, long before the close of the 19th century this picture of families working together was changing. People realized that early death was often related to the harshness of their daily routine. Also, many young people longed for formal schooling or to pursue scientific careers or vocations in the arts, life courses that were sometimes prevented by the necessity of hard work. Industrialization promised to free people from the burden of domestic labor. Many families abandoned farm life and crowded into tenement housing in the cities to take jobs in factories. But factory work was irregular. Most families lived in poverty and squalor, and disease was common.

Reformers of the day sought to alleviate these miseries. In the spirit of the times, many of them envisioned a utopian world without social problems, where scientific inventions would free humans from physical labor, and modern medicine would eliminate disease and suffering. Their reforms eventually transformed work patterns throughout our culture, which in turn changed the roles of men, women, and children within the family unit.

By the turn of the century, many fathers began to earn a living away from the farm and the household. Thus, they no longer worked side by side with their children. Where a son once forged ties with his father as he was taught how to run the farm or the family business, now he could follow his father’s example only by distancing himself from the daily work of the household, eventually leaving home to do his work. Historian John Demos notes:

The wrenching apart of work and home-life is one of the great themes in social history. And for fathers, in particular, the consequences can hardly be overestimated. Certain key elements of pre-modern fatherhood dwindled and disappeared (e.g., father as pedagogue, father as moral overseer, father as companion). . . .

Of course, fathers had always been involved in the provision of goods and services to their families; but before the nineteenth century such activity was embedded in a larger matrix of domestic sharing. . . . Now, for the first time, the central activity of fatherhood was cited outside one’s immediate household. Now, being fully a father meant being separated from one’s children for a considerable part of every working day. 2

By the 1950s fathers were gone such long hours they became guests in their own homes. The natural connection between fathers and their children was supposed to be preserved and strengthened by playing together. However, play, like work, also changed over the course of the century, becoming more structured, more costly, and less interactive.

Initially, the changing role of women in the family was more subtle because the kind of work they did remained the same. Yet how their tasks were carried out changed drastically over the 20th century, influenced by the modernization of America’s factories and businesses. “Housewives” were encouraged to organize, sterilize, and modernize. Experts urged them to purchase machines to do their physical labor and told them that market-produced goods and services were superior because they freed women to do the supposedly more important work of the mind.

Women were told that applying methods of factory and business management to their homes would ease their burdens and raise the status of household work by “professionalizing” it. Surprisingly, these innovations did neither. Machines tended to replace tasks once performed by husbands and children, while mothers continued to carry out the same basic duties. Houses and wardrobes expanded, standards for cleanliness increased, and new appliances encouraged more elaborate meal preparation. More time was spent shopping and driving children to activities. With husbands at work and older children in school, care of the house and young children now fell almost exclusively to mothers, actually lengthening their work day. 3 Moreover, much of a mother’s work began to be done in isolation. Work that was once enjoyable because it was social became lonely, boring, and monotonous.

Even the purpose of family work was given a facelift. Once performed to nurture and care for one another, it was reduced to “housework” and was done to create “atmosphere.” Since work in the home had “use value” instead of “exchange value,” it remained outside the market economy and its worth became invisible. Being a mother now meant spending long hours at a type of work that society said mattered little and should be “managed” to take no time at all.

Prior to modernization, children shared much of the hard work, laboring alongside their fathers and mothers in the house and on the farm or in a family business. This work was considered good for them—part of their education for adulthood. Children were expected to learn all things necessary for a good life by precept and example, and it was assumed that the lives of the adults surrounding them would be worthy of imitation.

With industrialization, children joined their families in factory work, but gradually employers split up families, often rejecting mothers and fathers in favor of the cheap labor provided by children. Many children began working long hours to help put bread on the family table. Their work was hard, often dangerous, and children lost fingers, limbs, and lives. The child labor movement was thus organized to protect the “thousands of boys and girls once employed in sweat shops and factories” from “the grasping greed of business.” 4 However, the actual changes were much more complex and the consequences more far-reaching. 5 Child labor laws, designed to end the abuses, also ended child labor.

At the same time that expectations for children to work were diminishing, new fashions in child rearing dictated that children needed to have their own money and be trained to spend it wisely. Eventually, the relationship of children and work inside the family completely reversed itself: children went from economic asset to pampered consumer.

“In almost every facet of our prosperous, contemporary lifestyle, we strive for the ease associated with Eden. . . . Back to Eden is not onward to Zion.”

Thus, for each family member the contribution to the family became increasingly abstract and ever distant from the labor of Adam and Eve, until the work given as a blessing to the first couple had all but disappeared. Today a man feels “free” if he can avoid any kind of physical labor—actual work in the fields is left to migrant workers and illegal aliens. Meanwhile, a woman is considered “free” if she chooses a career over mothering at home, freer still if she elects not to bear children at all.

In almost every facet of our prosperous, contemporary lifestyle, we strive for the ease associated with Eden. The more abstract and mental our work, the more distanced from physical labor, the higher the status it is accorded. Better off still is the individual who wins the lottery or inherits wealth and does not have to work at all. Our homes are designed to reduce the time we must spend in family work. An enviable vacation is one where all such work is done for us—where we are fed without preparing our meals, dressed without ironing our shirts, cleaned up after wherever we go, whatever we do.

Even the way we go about building relationships denies the saving power inherent in working side by side at something that requires us to cooperate in spite of differences. Rather, we “bond” with our children by getting the housework out of the way so the family can participate in structured “play.” We improve our marriages by getting away from the house and kids, from responsibility altogether, to communicate uninterrupted as if work, love, and living were not inseparably connected. We are so thoroughly convinced that the relationship itself, abstract and apart from life, is what matters that, a relationship free from lasting obligations—to marriage, children, or family labor—is fast becoming the ideal. At every turn, we are encouraged to seek an Eden-like bliss where we enjoy life’s bounties without working for them and where we don’t have to have children, at least not interrupting whatever we’re doing. 6

However, back to Eden is not onward to Zion. Adam and Eve entered mortality to do what they could not do in the Garden: to gain salvation by bringing forth, sustaining, and nourishing life. As they worked together in this stewardship, with an eye single to the glory of God, a deep and caring relationship would grow out of their shared daily experience. Today, the need for salvation has not changed; the opportunity to do family work has not changed; the love that blossoms as spouses labor together has not changed. Perhaps, then, we are still obligated to do the work of Adam and Eve.

Illustration of father and son washing a window.

For Our Sakes

The story of Adam and Eve raises an important question. How does ordinary, family-centered work like feeding, clothing, and nurturing a family—work that often seems endless and mundane—actually bless our lives? The answer is so obvious in common experience that it has become obscure: Family work links people. On a daily basis, the tasks we do to stay alive provide us with endless opportunities to recognize and fill the needs of others. Family work is a call to enact love, and it is a call that is universal. Throughout history, in every culture, whether in poverty or prosperity, there has been the ever-present need to shelter, clothe, feed, and care for each other.

Ironically, it is the very things commonly disliked about family work that offer the greatest possibilities for nurturing close relationships and forging family ties. Some people dislike family work because, they say, it is mindless. Yet chores that can be done with a minimum of concentration leave our minds free to focus on one another as we work together. We can talk, sing, or tell stories as we work. Working side by side tends to dissolve feelings of hierarchy, making it easier for children to discuss topics of concern with their parents. Unlike play, which usually requires mental concentration as well as physical involvement, family work invites intimate conversation between parent and child.

We also tend to think of household work as menial, and much of it is. Yet, because it is menial, even the smallest child can make a meaningful contribution. Children can learn to fold laundry, wash windows, or sort silverware with sufficient skill to feel valued as part of the family. Since daily tasks range from the simple to the complex, participants at every level can feel competent yet challenged, including the parents with their overall responsibility for coordinating tasks, people, and projects into a cooperative, working whole.

Another characteristic of ordinary family work that gives it such power is repetition. Almost as quickly as it is done, it must be redone. Dust gathers on furniture, dirt accumulates on floors, beds get messed up, children get hungry and dirty, meals are eaten, clothes become soiled. As any homemaker can tell you, the work is never done. When compared with the qualities of work that are prized in the public sphere, this aspect of family work seems to be just another reason to devalue it. However, each rendering of a task is a new invitation for all to enter the family circle. The most ordinary chores can become daily rituals of family love and belonging. Family identity is built moment by moment amidst the talking and teasing, the singing and storytelling, and even the quarreling and anguish that may attend such work sessions.

Some people also insist that family work is demeaning because it involves cleaning up after others in the most personal manner. Yet, in so doing, we observe their vulnerability and weaknesses in a way that forces us to admit that life is only possible day-to-day by the grace of God. We are also reminded of our own dependence on others who have done, and will do, such work for us. We are reminded that when we are fed, we could be hungry; when we are clean, we could be dirty; and when we are healthy and strong, we could be feeble and dependent. Family work is thus humbling work, helping us to acknowledge our unavoidable interdependence; encouraging (even requiring) us to sacrifice “self” for the good of the whole.

God gave us family work as a link to one another, as a link to Him, as a stepping stone toward salvation that is always available and that has the power to transform us spiritually as we transform others physically. This daily work of feeding and clothing and sheltering each other is perhaps the only opportunity all humanity has in common. Whatever the world takes from us, it cannot take away the daily maintenance needed for survival. Whether we find ourselves in wealth, poverty, or struggling as most of us do in day-to-day mediocrity, we need to be fed, to be clothed, to be sheltered, to be clean. And so does our neighbor.

When Christ instituted one of the most sacred of ordinances, one still performed today among the apostles, what symbolism did He choose? Of all the things He could have done as He prepared His apostles for His imminent death and instructed them on how to become one, He chose the washing of feet—a task ordinarily done in His time by the most humble of servants. When Peter objected, thinking that this was not the kind of work someone of Christ’s earthly, much less eternal stature would be expected to do, Christ made clear the importance of participating: “If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me” ( John 13:8 ).

So after he had washed their feet, and had taken his garments, and was set down again, he said unto them, Know ye what I have done to you?

Ye call me Master and Lord: and ye say well; for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet; ye also ought to wash one another’s feet.

For I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you. ( John 13:12–15 )

And so for our sakes this work seems mindless, menial, repetitive, and demeaning. This daily toiling is in honor of life itself. After all, isn’t this temporal work of tending to the necessary and routine currents of daily life, whether for our families or for our neighbors, the work we really came to Earth to do? By this humble service—this washing of one another’s feet—we sacrifice our pride and invite God to wash our own souls from sin. Indeed, such work embodies within it the condescension of the Savior himself. It is nothing less than doing unto Christ, by serving the least of our brethren, what He has already done for us.

Illustration of mother and daughter mopping the floor together.

Family Work in Modern Times

If family work is indeed what I say it is—a natural invitation to become Christlike devalued by a world that has shattered family relationships in its quest for gain and ease—what can be done? Families working harmoniously together at a relaxed pace is a wonderful ideal, but what about the realities of our day? Men do work away from home, and many feel out-of-step when it comes to family work. Children do go to school, and between homework and other activities do not welcome opportunities to work around the house. Whether mothers are employed outside the home or not, they often live in exhaustion, doing most of the family work without willing help.

Yet we cannot go back to a pre-industrial society where hard family work was unavoidable, nor would it be desirable or appropriate to do so.

Life for most people may have changed over the century, but opportunities to instill values, develop character, and work side by side remain. We have all seen how times of crises call forth such effort—war, hurricanes, earthquakes, floods—all disasters no one welcomes, but they provide opportunities for us to learn to care for one another. In truth, opportunities are no less available in our ordinary daily lives.

The length of this article does not allow for the discussion we really need to have at this point, and there will never be “five easy steps” to accomplish these ends. Rather, the eternal principles that govern family work will be uncovered by each of us according to our personal time line of discovery. The following, however, are several ideas that may be helpful.

Tilling the Soil.

Although tilling the soil for our sustenance is unrealistic for most Americans today, modern prophets have stressed the need to labor with the earth, if only in a small way. Former LDS Church President Spencer W. Kimball was particularly insistent on the need to grow gardens–not just as a food supply, but because of the “lessons of life” inherent in the process as well as the family bonds that could be strengthened:

I hope that we understand that, while having a garden, for instance, is often useful in reducing food costs and making available delicious fresh fruits and vegetables, it does much more than this. Who can gauge the value of that special chat between daughter and Dad as they weed or water the garden? How do we evaluate the good that comes from the obvious lessons of planting, cultivating, and the eternal law of the harvest? And how do we measure the family togetherness and cooperating that must accompany successful canning? Yes, we are laying up resources in store, but perhaps the greater good is contained in the lessons of life we learn as we live providently and extend to our children their pioneer heritage. (Emphasis in original.) 7

Exemplifying the Attitudes We Want Our Children to Have.

Until we feel about family work the way we want our children to feel about it, we will teach them nothing. If we dislike this work, they will know it. If we do not really consider it our work, they will know it. If we wish to hurry and get it out of the way or if we wish we were doing it alone so it could better meet our standards, they will know it. Most of us have grown up with a strong conviction that we are fortunate to live at a time when machines and prosperity and efficient organizational skills have relieved us of much of the hands-on work of sustaining daily life. If we wish to change our family habits on this matter, we must first change our own minds and hearts.

Refusing Technology That Interferes With Togetherness.

As we labor together in our families, we will begin to cherish certain work experiences, even difficult ones, for reasons we can’t explain. When technology comes along that streamlines that work, we need not rush out and buy it just because it promises to make our labor more efficient. Saving time and effort is not always the goal. When we choose to heat convenience foods in the microwave or to process vegetables in a noisy machine, we choose not to talk, laugh, and play as we peel and chop. Deciding which modern conveniences to live with is a personal matter. Some families love washing dishes together by hand; others would never give up the dishwasher. Before we accept a scientific “improvement,” we should ask ourselves what we are giving up for what we will gain.

Insisting Gently That Children Help.

A frequent temptation in our busy lives today is to do the necessary family work by ourselves. A mother, tired from a long day of work in the office, may find it easier to do the work herself than to add the extra job of getting a family member to help. A related temptation is to make each child responsible only for his own mess, to put away his own toys, to clean his own room, to do his own laundry, and then to consider this enough family work to require of a child. When we structure work this way, we may shortchange ourselves by minimizing the potential for growing together that comes from doing the work for and with each other.

Canadian scholars Joan Grusec and Lorenzo Cohen, along with Australian Jacqueline Goodnow, compared children who did “self-care tasks” such as cleaning up their own rooms or doing their own laundry, with children who participated in “family-care tasks” such as setting the table or cleaning up a space that is shared with others. They found that it is the work one does “for others” that leads to the development of concern for others, while “work that focuses on what is one’s ‘own,’” does not. Other studies have also reported a positive link between household work and observed actions of helpfulness toward others. In one international study, African children who did “predominantly family-care tasks [such as] fetching wood or water, looking after siblings, running errands for parents” showed a high degree of helpfulness while “children in the Northeast United States, whose primary task in the household was to clean their own room, were the least helpful of all the children in the six cultures that were studied.” 8

Avoiding a Business Mentality at Home.

Even with the best of intentions, most of us revert to “workplace” skills while doing family work. We overorganize and believe that children, like employees, won’t work unless they are “motivated,” supervised, and perhaps even paid. This line of thought will get us into trouble. Some managing, of course, is necessary and helpful—but not the kind that oversees from a distance. Rather, family work should be directed with the wisdom of a mentor who knows intimately both the task and the student, who appreciates both the limits and the possibilities of any given moment. A common error is to try to make the work “fun” with a game or contest, yet to chastise children when they become naturally playful (“off task,” to our thinking). Fond family memories often center around spontaneous fun while working, like pretending to be maids, drawing pictures in spilled flour, and wrapping up in towels to scrub the floor. Another error is to reward children monetarily for their efforts. According to financial writer Grace Weinstein, “Unless you want your children to think of you as an employer and of themselves not as family members but as employees, you should think long and hard about introducing money as a motivational force. Money distorts family feeling and weakens the members’ mutual support.” 9

Working Side by side With Our Children.

Assigning family work to our children while we expect to be free to do other activities only reinforces the attitudes of the world. LDS Church President Gordon B. Hinckley said: “Children need to work with their parents, to wash dishes with them, to mop floors with them, to mow lawns, to prune trees and shrubbery, to paint and fix up, to clean up, and to do a hundred other things in which they will learn that labor is the price of cleanliness, progress, and prosperity.” 10

Most of the important lessons that flow from family work are derived from the cooperative nature of the work. Christ said, “The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise” ( John 5:19 ). Perhaps this concept is more literal than we have assumed.

Several years ago one of my students, a young mother of two daughters, wrote of the challenges she experienced learning to feel a strong bond with her firstborn. Because this daughter was born prematurely, she was taken from her mother and kept in isolation at the hospital for the first several weeks of her life. Even after the baby came home, she looked so fragile that the mother was afraid to hold her. She felt many of the inadequacies typical of new mothers, plus additional ones that came from her own rough childhood experiences. As time passed, she felt that she loved her daughter, but suffered feelings of deficiency, often to the point of tears, and wondered, “Why don’t I have that ‘natural bond’ with my first child that I do with my second?”

Then she learned about the idea of working together as a means to build bonds. She purposely included her daughter in her work around the house, and gradually, she recalls, “our relationship . . . deepened in a way that I had despaired of ever realizing.” She describes the moment she realized the change that had taken place:

One morning before the girls were to leave [to visit family in another state], Mandy and I were sitting and folding towels together, chattering away. As I looked at her, a sudden rush of maternal love flooded over me–it was no longer something that I had to work at. She looked up at me and must have read my heart in my expression. We fell laughing and crying into each other’s arms. She looked up at me and said, “Mom, what would you do without me?” I couldn’t even answer her, because the thought was too painful to entertain. 11

In a world that lauds the signing of peace treaties and the building of skyscrapers as the truly great work, how can we make such a big thing out of folding laundry? Gary Saul Morson, a professor of Russian literature at Northwestern University, argues convincingly that “the important events are not the great ones, but the infinitely numerous and apparently inconsequential ordinary ones, which, taken together, are far more effective and significant.” 12

To Bring Again Zion

Family work is a gift from the Lord to every mortal, a gift that transcends time, place, and circumstance. On a daily basis it calls us, sometimes forces us, to face our mortality, to ask for the grace of God, to admit that we need our neighbor and that our neighbor needs us. It provides us with a daily opportunity to recognize the needs of those around us and put them before our own. This invitation to serve one another in oneness of heart and mind can become a simple tool that, over time, will bring the peace that attends Zion.

I learned firsthand of the power of this ordinary work not only to bind families but to link people of different cultures when I accompanied a group of university students on a service and study experience in Mexico. The infant mortality rate in many of the villages was high, and we had been invited by community leaders to teach classes in basic nutrition and sanitation. Experts who had worked in developing countries told us that the one month we had to do this was not enough time to establish rapport and win the trust of the people, let alone do any teaching. But we did not have the luxury of more time.

In the first village, we arrived at the central plaza where we were to meet the leaders and families of the village. On our part, tension was high. The faces of the village men and women who slowly gathered were somber and expressionless. They are suspicious of us, I thought. A formal introduction ceremony had been planned. The village school children danced and sang songs, and our students sang. The expressions on the faces of the village adults didn’t change.

“Helping one another nurture children, care for the land, prepare food, and clean homes can bind lives together.”

Unexpectedly, I was invited to speak to the group and explain why we were there. What could I say? That we were “big brother” here to try to change the ways they had farmed and fed their families for hundreds of years? I quickly said a silent prayer, desirous of dispelling the feeling of hierarchy, anxious to create a sense of being on equal footing. I searched for the right words, trying to downplay the official reasons for our visit, and began, “We are students; we want to share some things we have learned. . . .” Then I surprised even myself by saying, “But what we are really here for is, we would like to learn to make tortillas.” The people laughed. After the formalities were over, several wonderful village couples came to us and said, “You can come to our house to make tortillas.” The next morning, we sent small groups of students to each of their homes, and we all learned to make tortillas. An almost instant rapport was established. Later, when we began classes, they were surprisingly well attended, with mothers sitting on the benches and fathers standing at the back of the hall listening and caring for little children.

Because our classes were taking time from the necessary work of fertilizing and weeding their crops, we asked one of the local leaders if we could go to the fields with them on the days when we did not teach and help them hoe and spread the fertilizer. His first response was, “No. You couldn’t do that. You are teachers; we are farmers.” I assured him that several of us had grown up on farms, that we could tell weeds from corn and beans, and in any case, we would be pleased if they would teach us. So we went to the fields. As we worked together, in some amazing way we became one. Artificial hierarchies dissolved as we made tortillas together, weeded together, ate lunch together, and together took little excursions to enjoy the beauty of the valley. When the month was over, our farewells were sad and sweet—we were sorry to leave such dear friends, but happy for the privilege of knowing them.

Over the next several years I saw this process repeated again and again in various settings. I am still in awe of the power of shared participation in the simple, everyday work of sustaining life. Helping one another nurture children, care for the land, prepare food, and clean homes can bind lives together. This is the power of family work, and it is this power, available in every home, no matter how troubled, that can end the turmoil of the family, begin to change the world, and bring again Zion.

Study by Edelman Financial Services, May 5, 1999, (see https://www.kidsource.com/kidsource/content5/mothers.worth.html ).
John Demos, “The Changing Faces of Fatherhood,” Past, Present, Personal: The Family and the Life Course in American History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 51–52.
See R. S. Cowan, More Work for Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology from the Open Hearth to the Microwave (New York: Basic Books, 1983).
William A. McKeever, “The New Child Labor Movement,” Journal of Home Economics , vol. 5 (April 1913), pp. 137–139.
See Viviana A. Zelizer, Pricing the Priceless Child (New York: Basic Books, 1985).
See Germaine Greer, Sex and Destiny (New York: Harper & Row, 1984), and J. Van de Kaa, “Europe’s Second Demographic Transition,” Population Bulletin , vol. 42, no. 1 (March 1987), pp. 1–57.
Spencer W. Kimball, “Welfare Services, The Gospel in Action,” Ensign , November 1977, p. 78.
Joan E. Grusec, Jacqueline J. Goodnow, and Lorenzo Cohen, “Household Work and the Development of Concern for Others,” Developmental Psychology , vol. 32, no. 6 (1996), pp. 999–1007.
Grace W. Weinstein, “Money Games Parents Play,” Redbook , August 1985, p. 107, taken from her book Children and Money: A Parents’ Guide (New York: New American Library, 1985).
Gordon B. Hinckley, “Four Simple Things to Help Our Families and Our Nations,” Ensign , September 1996, p. 7.
Michelle Cottingham, unpublished paper.
Gary Saul Morson, “Prosaics: An Approach to the Humanities,” American Scholar , vol. 57 (Autumn 1988), p. 519.

A mother bends down as she helps her daughter pump up a bicycle tire.

Family Focus

A House Undivided

More women are working outside the home—but they are still doing lion’s share of housework. Why?

The Imperfectly Happy Family

After suffering an aneurysm, Katy and her husband had to adjust their expectations for themselves and their children.

A photo of a wedding ring lying on top of a text. The ring circles the word "joined" in the text.

Divide or Conquer

Thoughts about divorce are common—perhaps even inevitable—and don’t mean the end of a relationship.

10 Reasons Why Household Chores Are Important

Whether we like it or not, household chores are a necessary part of everyday life, ensuring that our homes continue to run efficiently, and that our living environments remain organized and clean, thereby promoting good overall health and safety. Involving children in household chores gives them opportunity to become active participant in the house. Kids begin to see themselves as important contributors to the family. Holding children accountable for their chores can increase a sense of themselves as responsible and actually make them more responsible.

Children will feel more capable for having met their obligations and completed their tasks. If you let children off the hook for chores because they have too much schoolwork or need to practice a sport, then you are saying, intentionally or not, that their academic or athletic skills are most important. And if your children fail a test or fail to block the winning shot, then they have failed at what you deem to be most important.

They do not have other pillars of competency upon which to rely. By completing household tasks, they may not always be the star student or athlete, but they will know that they can contribute to the family, begin to take care of themselves, and learn skills that they will need as an adult. Here is a list of household chores for kids:

1. Sense of Responsibility

Kids who do chores learn responsibility and gain important life skills that will serve them well throughout their lives. Kids feel competent when they do their chores. Whether they’re making their bed or they’re sweeping the floor, helping out around the house gives them a sense of accomplishment. Doing daily household chores also helps kids feel like they’re part of the team. Pitching in and helping family members is good for them and it encourages them to be good citizens.

Read here a detail blog: Routine helps kids

2. Beneficial to siblings

It is helpful for siblings of kids who have disabilities to see that everyone in the family participates in keeping the family home running, each with responsibilities that are appropriate for his or her unique skill sets and abilities.

Having responsibilities like chores provides one with a sense of both purpose and accomplishment.

4. Preparation for Employment

Learning how to carry out household chore is an important precursor to employment. Chores can serve as an opportunity to explore what your child excels at and could possibly pursue as a job down the road.

5. Make your life easier

Your kids can actually be of help to you! At first, teaching these chores may require more of your time and energy, but in many cases your child will be able to eventually do his or her chores completely independently, ultimately relieving you of certain responsibilities.

6. Chores may make your child more accountable

If your child realizes the consequences of making a mess, he or she may think twice, knowing that being more tidy in the present will help make chores easier.

7. Develop fine and gross motor skills and planning abilities

Tasks like opening a clothes pin, filling and manipulating a watering can and many more actions are like a workout for the body and brain and provide practical ways to flex those muscles!

8. Teach empathy

Helping others out and making their lives easier is a great way to teach empathy. After your daughter completes a chore, you can praise and thank her, stating, “Wow… great job! Because you helped out, now Mommy has one less job to do. I really appreciate that!”

9. Strengthen bonds with pets

There is a growing body of research about how animals can help individuals with special needs. When your child feeds and cares for his pet, it strengthens their bond and makes your pet more likely to gravitate toward your child.

10. Gain an appreciation and understanding of currency

What better way to teach your child the value of a rupee than by having him earn it. After your child finishes his chores, pay him right away and immediately take him to his favorite toy store where he can buy something he wants.

Book your session now

Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Mental Health
Multilingual
Occupational Therapy
Speech Delay
Speech Therapy
Success Stories
News of the month for March 2024 April 16, 2024
News of the month for Jan 2024 January 29, 2024
Shining a Light on the Unseen: The Importance of Syndrome Awareness January 23, 2024
Celebrating Excellence: Pratiksha Gupta Wins SABLA NARI Award for Best Speech Language Therapist and Audiologist 2023 January 19, 2024
Speech Beyond Lisps: Celebrating Diversity in Communication January 16, 2024

Don't miss our one of its kind SPEAK EASY PROGRAM for stuttering management. Chat with us to know more! Dismiss

Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World

Read our research on:

Full Topic List

Regions & Countries

Publications
Our Methods
Short Reads
Tools & Resources

Read Our Research On:

Sharing chores a key to good marriage, say majority of married adults

Sharing household chores is an important part of marriage for a majority of married adults. But among those who have children, there are notable differences in perceptions of who actually does more of the work around the house.

More than half of married U.S. adults (56%) – both with and without children – say sharing household chores is “very important” to a successful marriage, according to the most recent report from Pew Research Center’s Religious Landscape Study. That ranks behind having shared interests (64%) and a satisfying sexual relationship (61%), but ahead of having children (43%) and having adequate income (42%).

Among married adults, men are slightly more likely than women to say sharing household chores is very important to a successful marriage (63% vs. 58%). And those ages 18 to 29 (67%) and ages 30 to 49 (63%) are more likely to say sharing chores is very important, compared with 57% of those ages 50 to 64 and 56% of those 65 and older.

According to a separate Pew Research Center survey of American parents conducted in 2015, half of married or cohabiting couples living with at least one child under age 18 say their household chores are split about equally. But 41% say the mother does more, while 8% say the father does more. The workload is seen as somewhat more equitable in households where both parents work full time: 59% of adults in this type of household say chores are divided about equally, while 31% say the mother does more and 9% say the father does more.

To be sure, even among couples where both partners work full time, the number of hours worked may differ significantly, and this could in turn influence how household chores are distributed. Previous research indicates that, among full-time working parents, fathers work more hours, on average, than mothers do.

And indeed, personal earnings, which are linked to hours worked outside the home, are associated with how U.S. parents perceive the way their household chores are split. Those who earn about the same as their partner are more likely to say the division of household labor is about equal (65%) than those who earn less (52%) or more (51%). Among those parents who earn less than their partner, 41% say they personally take on more chores than their partner, while just 6% say their partner does more around the house. And among those who earn more than their partner, 29% say their partner does the larger share of chores, compared with 20% who say they personally do more.

Perceptions about how chores are delegated differ significantly by gender. Fathers are more likely than mothers to say the chores are split about evenly between both partners in their household (56% vs. 46%). Fully half of mothers (50%) say they take up more responsibilities around the house than their partner, compared with just 12% of fathers who say they do more around the house. About one-third of fathers (32%) say their spouse or partner takes on more of the responsibility for chores in their household, compared with just 4% of mothers who say the father does more.

Family & Relationships
Gender Roles
Household Structure & Family Roles
Marriage & Divorce

A.W. Geiger is a former associate digital producer and writer for Pew Research Center .

Few East Asian adults believe women have an obligation to society to have children

Among parents with young adult children, some dads feel less connected to their kids than moms do, how teens and parents approach screen time, most east asian adults say men and women should share financial and caregiving duties, among young adults without children, men are more likely than women to say they want to be parents someday, most popular.

1615 L St. NW, Suite 800 Washington, DC 20036 USA (+1) 202-419-4300 | Main (+1) 202-857-8562 | Fax (+1) 202-419-4372 | Media Inquiries

Research Topics

Age & Generations
Coronavirus (COVID-19)
Economy & Work
Gender & LGBTQ
Immigration & Migration
International Affairs
Internet & Technology
Methodological Research
News Habits & Media
Non-U.S. Governments
Other Topics
Politics & Policy
Race & Ethnicity
Email Newsletters

ABOUT PEW RESEARCH CENTER Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts .

Terms & Conditions

Cookie Settings

Reprints, Permissions & Use Policy

Search Menu
Advance articles
Author Guidelines
Submission Site
Open Access
Why Submit?
About Social Forces
Editorial Board
Advertising and Corporate Services
Journals Career Network
Self-Archiving Policy
Dispatch Dates
Journals on Oxford Academic
Books on Oxford Academic

Article Contents

Who is doing the housework today, how did our views change after publishing “is anyone doing the housework”, what are the promising research directions for the future.

< Previous

Housework: Who Did, Does or Will Do It, and How Much Does It Matter?

Article contents
Figures & tables
Supplementary Data

Suzanne M. Bianchi, Liana C. Sayer, Melissa A. Milkie, John P. Robinson, Housework: Who Did, Does or Will Do It, and How Much Does It Matter?, Social Forces , Volume 91, Issue 1, September 2012, Pages 55–63, https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/sos120

Permissions Icon Permissions

“Is Anyone Doing the Housework?” (Bianchi et al. 2000) was motivated, like much of the research on housework, by a desire to better understand gender inequality and social change in the work and family arena in the United States. During the 1990s, Arlie Hochschild's (1989) influential book, T he Second Shift , provided the dominant assessment of the gender division of labor in the home ( Konigsberg 2011 ): men were unwilling to share the burden of work in the home and thus employed women came home to a “second shift” of housework and childcare, increasing gender inequality. Her rich qualitative study was based on a small sample of unknown generalizability, however ( Milkie, Raley, & Bianchi 2009 ).

The collection and release of the large and nationally representative 1987-88 National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH) unleashed a flurry of housework articles in the quantitative sociological literature. The NSFH had the advantage of reports of housework from both members of a couple and husbands' and wives' assessments of fairness in the household division of labor, but these data could not provide the trend analysis critical to the understanding of social change that time diary data collections allowed. “Is Anyone Doing the Housework?” used the NSFH but also presented analysis of the only nationally representative data available – time diaries – with which to assess trends in housework and broaden the discussion of how women and men might be reallocating time in the home during a period of rapid change in women's work outside the home.

The citation count in Google Scholar stands at 910 citations (as of April 20, 2012), with those citations continuing to the present. 1 In the article, we showed that the gender division of labor in housework became more equal over this period, in part because men increased their time in housework but more importantly because women dramatically decreased the time they spent in these activities. Men increased their propensity to do housework and the increase was not a result of change in population composition, whereas for women it was a mix of decreased likelihood of doing housework but also an increase in the proportion of women least likely to spend time in housework (e.g., employed women). We compared time diary data to the NSFH, demonstrating that the NSFH survey questions resulted in estimates that were about 50 percent higher than time diary estimates but that both data sources yielded similar conclusions about the gender gap in housework. Finally, using the NSFH data, we provided a multivariate description of the correlates of wives' housework time, husbands' housework time and the gender gap in housework time of married couples. The findings remain relevant today, save the need for the update of trends provided here.

Using time diary data for 1965, 1975, 1985 and 1995, our observation window on housework was one in which the pressure on women to “shed load” to accommodate increased market work was high and in which the pressure on men to “pick up some of the slack” was perhaps also high. Our data analysis spanned the 1970-90 period of greatest labor force increases for U.S. women, particularly married women with young children. Subsequent trend analyses of women's labor force participation, housework and childcare in the 1990s showed much less increase and a leveling off in rates by the end of the 20 th century ( Sayer 2005 ; Sayer, Bianchi, & Robinson 2004 ), causing some to argue that the gender revolution was over ( Cotter, Hermsen, & Vanneman 2011 ).

Table 1 updates trends in men's and women's weekly hours of housework through 2010, the most recent data we have available at this writing. Panel A and B show estimates for the two universes we used in the original article: all individuals, aged 25 to 64 years and the subset of married individuals in these age ranges. Table 1 also adds a universe that was not the focus of our 2000 article – Panel C on married parents. This group became a major focus of our subsequent work.

Trends in Average Weekly Housework Hours by Gender for Individuals Aged 25 to 64

Source: Authors' calculations, historical USA time diary sample (1965-1999) and American Time Use Survey 2003-2010.

Women's time in housework declined throughout the 1965-2010 period, with the most sizable declines between 1965 and 1985. Men's housework time more than doubled between 1965 and 1998/9, when it reached a high of 11 hours per week, and then dropped to 10 hours a week by 2009/10. 2 In 2009/10, women are estimated to do 1.6 times the amount of housework as men, on average (with wives averaging 1.7 times the housework of husbands, and married mothers averaging 1.9 times the housework of married fathers). Changes are concentrated in core housework; women's time in other housework has changed little and men's has increased, perhaps because houses are bigger, home renovation more prominent and household finances more complicated to manage. In other work we show that as women increased the time they allocated to market work, they had to reduce other activities and they reduced housework hours in almost a one-for-one trade with their increase in market hours ( Bianchi 2011 ; Bianchi, Robinson, & Milkie 2006 ).

Panel C shows an indicator that was not included in our 2000 article on housework, the average number of weekly hours married parents spend in direct or primary childcare activities. Time in childcare declined for married mothers between 1965 and 1975, as the United States moved from the large family sizes of Baby Boom households to family sizes that have stabilized around replacement fertility, an average of two children per family. But after 1975, married mothers' time in childcare rose from 7.3 hours in 1975 to 13.7 hours in 2009/10, a trend that differs significantly from the trend in housework. Married fathers' time in childcare also increased from a low of 2.4 hours per week in 1975 to 7.2 hours per week in 2009/10. The gender gap in childcare declined over the period: the ratio of married mothers' to fathers' childcare declined from 4.0 in 1965 to 3.0 in 1975 and 1985 to 2.5 in 1995 and then further to 1.9 in 2009/10. Married fathers are doing less housework than in 1995 (the last data point in our 2000 article) but they seem to have shifted to doing more childcare. Indeed, changes in the gender division of childcare—or lack thereof—may have become central to future gains for women vis-à-vis men in the labor force.

Our views changed in three fundamental ways. First, we became much more convinced that studying housework hours in isolation of men's and women's allocation of time to other unpaid work in the home, especially childcare, and the allocation of time to paid work was leading to an incorrect – or at least incomplete – assessment of gender inequality. We showed that overall work hours of men and women were similar in total number, despite “second shift” claims of overburden for women but not men ( Bianchi, Robinson, & Milkie 2006 ; Milkie, Raley, & Bianchi 2009 ; Sayer 2005 ). Total hours of work, combining unpaid work in the home with paid work in the market, remained gender specialized in that women did a higher fraction of their hours in unpaid family care and men in paid work. Among parents, the group with the shortest work week was not fathers, however, but rather the subgroup of mothers who were not in the labor force (about one third of all married mothers with children younger than 6 years of age even today; Milkie, Raley, & Bianchi 2009 ). This is true even when “multitasking” – combining two housework tasks or doing childcare and housework – is considered (Sayer et al. 2009). However, assessments of gender inequality are incomplete when they not only isolate housework from other work but also do not consider how gendered time patterns evolve over the life course. Mothers who are employed part time or not at all may benefit from low total work hours at one time point compared with their partners, but at a later point they risk wage discrimination, career tracks that have gone adrift or divorce that leaves them in poverty.

Second, we became convinced that analyses focused on individual or couple-level factors were missing a big part of the story: how contextual factors influence housework levels and gender differences. Cross-national trends in housework mirror U.S. trends: more substantial declines in women's housework coupled with modest increases in men's housework and relative stasis in housework levels since the 1990s ( Hook 2006 ; Sayer 2010 ). Yet the comparative literature also documents substantial variation in levels of and gender gaps in housework that micro-level theories alone, with their emphasis on individual, couple and household determinants of who does the housework, were not able to explain. Multilevel theories and analyses revealed that women do less housework and men do more housework in countries with higher levels of full-time employment among women, greater provision of publicly funded childcare, shorter maternal leaves and more egalitarian gender attitudes ( Cooke & Baxter 2010 ; Treas & Drobnic 2010 ). The political, economic and social history of countries embeds “time circuits” ( Ferree 2010 ) among individuals in families and between families and institutions. These feedback loops broadly influence social welfare policies and ideologies about how much housework should be done and who should do it – families, the market or the state.

Third, we became much more convinced that the analysis of housework, motivated by a desire to understand gender inequality, was not sufficient. The sociological literature of the 1990s concentrated on housework in assessing inequality in the gender division of labor and gave relatively little attention to childcare. This fit with the 1950s ideology that “good wives” prioritized providing a welcoming, adult environment for cosseted husbands. Today, what women and men want from a spouse is similar: a partner with a good education, strong labor force prospects and shared interests ( Gerson 2010 ; Sweeney 2002 ). Newly married couples (in first marriages) share employment and housework relatively equally. But the surge of mothers into the labor force foregrounded women's work as mothers. Intense devotion to children emerged as central to the mark of a good woman, trumping housewifery, as children were seen to require more maternal devotion ( Hays 1996 ). Thus, the equality among married couples diminishes as they transition to parenthood, a transition that solidifies women's responsibility for household work and men's for wage work ( Baxter, Hewitt, & Haynes 2008 ).

Wives' and husbands' time allocation may be more similar, but mothers' and fathers' work patterns remain quite different. Thus, we have come to appreciate the importance of studying the gender division of care work. Housework can be left undone – at least for awhile – and it can be “fit in” around busy work schedules. Consequently, it does not present the barrier to women's market work and occupational mobility that caring for children often does. Young children have to be minded 24/7. If a mother (or father) of young children is to engage in an activity that is incompatible with child minding – and most paid work is – alternate arrangements for care of children must be made. Women reduce their paid work to care for children; men tend not to do this. Thus, gendered care giving retards movement toward gender equality in the labor market, perhaps far more so than gender differences in housework.

So understanding why women do so much more of the care work – of which housework is a component but not the most inflexible component – is central to the study of gender inequality, as is studying what might motivate men to more equally share in childcare activities. We do not yet have a very good understanding of which men – or the conditions under which men – involve themselves in the care of others. Quantitative within-country and across-country analyses provide mixed results about the effects of education and employment on men's housework and childcare but concur that socioeconomic and family characteristics explain less for men than they do for women. Country variation suggests distinct cultural models of parenting that influence levels and gender gaps in childcare and associations with paid employment ( Sayer & Gornick 2011 ).

Some of the theoretical perspectives that have been useful in studying housework are also more difficult to apply to the gender division of care. The bargaining perspective, for example, hypothesizes that women's economic power enables them to bargain out of housework. But parents report greater enjoyment of childcare activities than housework ( Robinson & Godbey 1999 ). There is an investment component to childcare that gives it greater meaning than housework (Connelly and Kimmel 2010), particularly because relationships with children are irreplaceable and lifelong ( Nelson 2010 ). Hence, it can less often be assumed that mothers want to bargain out of rearing their children (Raley, Wang, & Bianchi 2012). Mother's more often want to control childrearing than housework, referred to as “maternal gatekeeping” ( Allen & Hawkins 1999 ). Qualitative evidence suggests that investing large amounts of time in childrearing goes to the very identity of being a good parent, especially a good mother ( Hays 1996 ).

Childrearing is also a fundamental mechanism of class reproduction. Time intensive class differentiated parenting philosophies and practices, like the “concerted cultivation” model practiced by middle-class parents today ( Lareau 2003 ), are as much (if not more) a response to the heightened importance of elite educations in securing more precarious employment opportunities – and children's upward mobility – than they are about reproducing gender disadvantage. To be sure, concerted cultivation requires continued differentiation of mothers' and fathers' daily time, with implications for economic well-being because of mothers' reduced labor force participation and subsequently less favorable job and wage trajectories. But a focus on gender alone ignores how gender systems intersect with class and racial-ethnic hierarchies. Market or public sector substitutes for unpaid work transfer housework and childcare from (unpaid) wives and mothers to poorly paid racial-ethnic and immigrant women ( Glenn 2010 ) and thus reduce the need for men to pick up the housework slack ( Misra, Woodring, & Merz 2006 ; Williams 2004 ).

What is emerging is a fruitful examination of context in the arena of unpaid work, by using differences across countries to better assess overall gender inequality in housework and childcare. There is increased attention to fathers because we need models that explain fathers' as well as mothers' behavior. Quantitative studies suggest fathers' housework and childcare are influenced by complex relationships between individual and family characteristics and state regulatory frameworks, policy packages and cultural norms ( Hook 2010 ; Pfau-Effinger 2005 ). Qualitative studies highlight the importance of cultures of masculinity, within occupations and across countries, their effect on men's attitudes about housework and childcare and the opportunities for and constraints on doing unpaid family work ( Gerson 2010 ; Shows & Gerstel 2009 ).

Finally, studies of the current recession may prove illuminating, as periods of economic change often shake up the status quo in gender relations. “Is Anyone Doing the Housework?” showed that there was a change in men's involvement in the home as women dramatically increased their labor force participation. Perhaps it was not as extensive as it could have been, but it occurred. The current economic recession may be another opportunity for change, as it becomes clear how precarious jobs can be, how necessary paid work of women and men is to the income security of families and consequently how important it is for all adults to also participate in the care work that complements paid work. A small number of published studies report that one response of fathers to job loss is a shift in anchoring identity from being a breadwinner to being an involved, active father ( Chesley 2011 ; Sherman 2011 ). This suggests the historical centrality of breadwinning in securing both a positive masculine identity and entry into family roles may be waning. It is plausible that persistent high levels of unemployment during the Great Recession are altering the meaning of male unemployment, norms and attitudes about the gendered division of labor and gendered relationships between economic resources and power.

The incomplete gender revolution has been attributed to gendered incentives that pushed women into societally valued “masculine” activities and pulled men away from societally devalued “feminine” activities, like care work ( England 2010 ). Institutional frameworks and individual changes among men that “walk the talk” of valuing childcare and housework are promoted as the path to jumpstarting the gender revolution. The Great Recession may be fertile soil for such change. Shifts in population composition, from immigration to the aging of the baby boomers, growing levels of family income inequality and diverging patterns of fertility and legal marriage by social class may also affect incentives.

Forecasting the future of the gendered division of labor will require two things: (1. continued attention to intersecting systems of inequality within and across countries and (2. contextualizing the division of household and child labor within complex and changing life courses of work and family relations.

For three of the four of us, this is our most highly cited article. Only John Robinson has articles and books on other topics with higher citation counts. This high citation count suggests that the article continues to provide a useful introduction to the sociological literature on the gender division of housework. The writing is clear and provides a thoughtful discussion of the theoretical perspectives on the gender division of labor in the home. The empirical work is careful and comprehensive.

Small sample sizes in 1995 and 1998/9 make these estimates more unstable than those for more recent years.

This article and the original article reflected upon are available for free at oxford.ly/sfanniversary.

Allen Sarah M. Hawkins Alan J. . 1999 . “ Maternal Gatekeeping: Mothers' Beliefs and Behaviors That Inhibit Greater Father Involvement in Family Work .” Journal of Marriage and the Family 61 : 199 - 212 .

Google Scholar

Baxter J. Hewitt B. Haynes M. . 2008 . “ Life Course Transitions and Housework: Marriage, Parenthood, and Time on Housework .” Journal of Marriage and Family 70 : 259 - 72 .

Bianchi Suzanne M. . 2011 . “ Family Change and Time Allocation in American Families .” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 638 : 21 - 44 .

Bianchi Suzanne M. Milkie Melissa A. Sayer Liana C. Robinson John P. . 2000 . “ Is Anyone Doing the Housework? Trends in the Gender Division of Household Labor .” Social Forces 79 : 191 - 228 .

Bianchi Suzanne M. Robinson John P. Milkie Melissa A. . 2006 . Changing Rhythms of American Family Life . New York, NY : Russell Sage Foundation .

Google Preview

Chesley Noelle . 2011 . “ Stay-at-Home Fathers and Breadwinning Mothers .” Gender & Society 25 : 642 - 64 .

Connelly Rachel Jean Kimmel . 2010 . The Time Use of Mothers in the United States at the Beginning of the 21st Century . W.E. Upjohn Institute .

Cooke Lynn P. Baxter Janeen . 2010 . ““ Families” in International Context: Comparing Institutional Effects Across Western Societies .” Journal of Marriage & Family 72 : 516 - 36 .

Cotter D. Hermsen J. M. Vanneman R. . 2011 . “ The End of the Gender Revolution? Gender Role Attitudes From 1977 to 2008 .” AJS 117 : 259 - 89 .

England Paula . 2010 . “ The Gender Revolution: Uneven and Stalled .” Gender & Society 24 : 149 - 66 .

Ferree Myra M. . 2010 . “ Filling the Glass: Gender Perspectives on Families .” Journal of Marriage and Family 72 : 420 - 39 .

Gerson Kathleen . 2010 . The Unfinished Revolution: How a New Generation Is Reshaping Family, Work, and Gender in America . New York, NY : Oxford University Press .

Glenn Evelyn N. . 2010 . Forced to Care: Coercion and Caregiving in America . Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press .

Hays Sharon . 1996 . The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood . New haven, CT : Yale University Press .

Hochschild Arlie R. . 1989 . The Second Shift . New York, NY : Avon Books .

Hook Jennifer . 2010 . “ Gender Inequality in the Welfare State: Sex Segregation in Housework, 1965GÇô2003 .” American Journal of Sociology 115 :p1480-523.

Hook Jennifer L. . 2006 . “ Care in Context: Men's Unpaid Work in 20 Countries, 1965-2003 .” American Sociological Review 71 : 639 - 60 .

Konigsberg Ruth D. . 2011 “ Chore Wars .” Time 178 :p44-49. New York, NY : Time Inc .

Lareau Annette . 2003 . Unequal Childhoods: Race, Class and Family Life . Ewing, NJ : University of California Press .

Milkie Melissa A. Raley Sara B. Bianchi Suzanne M. . 2009 . “ Taking on the Second Shift: Time Allocations and Time Pressures of U.S. Parents With Preschoolers .” Social Forces 88 : 487 - 517 .

Misra Joya Woodring Jonathan Merz Sabine . 2006 . “ The Globalization of Care Work: Neoliberal Economic Restructuring and Migration Policy .” Globalizations 3 : 317 - 32 .

Nelson M. K. . 2010 . Parenting Out of Control: Anxious Parents in Uncertain Times . New York University .

Pfau-Effinger Birgit . 2005 . “ Culture and Welfare State Policies: Reflections on a Complex Interrelation .” Comparative Social Research 18 : 135 - 59 .

Raley Sara Bianchi Suzanne M. Wang Wendy . 2012 . “ When Do Fathers Care? Mothers' Economic Contribution and Fathers' Involvement in Childcare .” American Journal of Sociology 117 (5) .

Robinson John P. Godbey Geoffrey . 1999 . Time for Life: The Surprising Ways Americans Use Their Time . University Park, PA : Pennsylvania State University Press .

Sayer Liana C. . 2005 . “ Gender, Time, and Inequality: Trends in Women's and Men's Paid Work, Unpaid Work, and Free Time .” Social Forces 84 : 285 - 303 .

Sayer Liana C. . 2010 . “ Trends in Housework. ”. in Dividing the Domestic: Men, Women, and Household Work in Cross-National Perspective , Palo Alto, PA : Stanford University Press 19 - 38 . edited by Judith Treas and Sonja Drobnic

Sayer Liana C. Bianchi Suzanne M. Robinson John P. . 2004 . “ Are Parents Investing Less in Children? Trends in Mothers' and Fathers' Time With Children .” American Journal of Sociology 110 : 1 - 43 .

Sayer Liana C. England Paula Bittman Michael Bianchi Suzanne M. . 2009 . “ How Long Is the Second (Plus First) Shift? Gender Differences in Paid, Unpaid, and Total Work Time in Australia and the United States .” Journal of Comparative Family Studies 40 : 523 - 45 .

Sayer Liana C. Gornick Janet C. . 2011 . “ Cross-National Variation in the Influence of Employment Hours on Child Care Time .” European Sociological Review

Sherman Jennifer . 2011 . “ Men Without Sawmills: Job Loss and Gender Identity in Rural America .” in Economic Restructuring and Family Well-Being in Rural America . University Park, PA : Pennsylvania State University Press 82 - 104 . edited by Kristin E. Smith and Ann R. Tickamyer

Shows Carla Gerstel Naomi . 2009 . “ Fathering, Class, and Gender .” Gender & Society 23 : 161 - 87 .

Sweeney Megan M. . 2002 . “ Two Decades of Family Change: The Shifting Economic Foundations of Marriage .” American Sociological Review 67 : 132 - 47 .

Treas Judith Drobnic S. . 2010 . Dividing the Domestic: Men, Women, & Household Work in Cross-National Perspective . Palo Alto, PA : Stanford University Press .

Williams Fiona . 2004 . “ Trends in Women's Employment, Domestic Service, and Female Migration: Changing and Competing Patterns of Solidarity .” in Solidarity Between the Sexes and the Generations . Northampton, MA : Edward Elgar 201 - 218 . edited by Trudie Knijn and Aafke Komter

Email alerts

Citing articles via.

Recommend to your Library

Affiliations

Online ISSN 1534-7605
Print ISSN 0037-7732
Copyright © 2024 University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
About Oxford Academic
Publish journals with us
University press partners
What we publish
New features
Open access
Institutional account management
Rights and permissions
Get help with access
Accessibility
Advertising
Media enquiries
Oxford University Press
Oxford Languages
University of Oxford

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide

Copyright © 2024 Oxford University Press
Cookie settings
Cookie policy
Privacy policy
Legal notice

This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

Listening Tests
Academic Tests
General Tests
IELTS Writing Checker
IELTS Writing Samples
Speaking Club
IELTS AI Speaking Test Simulator
Latest Topics
Vocabularying
2024 © IELTS 69

Benefits of doing and sharing housework

IELTS essay Benefits of doing and sharing housework

Structure your answers in logical paragraphs
? One main idea per paragraph
Include an introduction and conclusion
Support main points with an explanation and then an example
Use cohesive linking words accurately and appropriately
Vary your linking phrases using synonyms
Try to vary your vocabulary using accurate synonyms
Use less common question specific words that accurately convey meaning
Check your work for spelling and word formation mistakes
Use a variety of complex and simple sentences
Check your writing for errors
Answer all parts of the question
? Present relevant ideas
Fully explain these ideas
Support ideas with relevant, specific examples
? Currently is not available
Meet the criteria
Doesn't meet the criteria
5 band Modern technology does have a far outreach on the private data Modern technology does have a far outreach on the private data and this aspect doesn't look promising on the bright side. According to my view, access to information at this rate can be perilous to the society as explained below for two major reasons. Primarily, the privacy of individuals is in dan ...
6 band Some people believe that a year gape before university education leads children's nowhere. Todays world is similar weightage giving to the experience and other activities besides educational qualifications. Some people believe that a year gape before university education leads children's nowhere. I opine that a year gape is beneficial for students in myriad ways. This essay will scrutiniz ...
One who speaks only one language is one person, but one who speaks two languages is two people. Turkish proverb
5 band How can you protect the environment Initially, using renewable energy sources is considered to be the most effective way to improve the environmental situation. Many companies are now altering fossil fuel with green energy because its usage and manufacture won't discharge emissions as fossil fuel. By reducing emissions from fossil fue ...
5 band What are some other benefits of space exploration? Space exploration has provided countless benefits to the people on earth. It pays off in goods, technology, and paychecks. The work is done by people who are paid to do it here on Earth. The money they receive helps them buy food, get homes, cars, and clothing. They pay taxes in their communities, w ...
We should learn languages because language is the only thing worth knowing even poorly. Kató Lomb
5 band Tell me what you will do to help people in difficult circumstances In my country, there are numerous impoverished people who need the aid. Not many times I saw homeless children not go to school, be forsaken and disable. They’re very miserable, therefore, I would like to do meaningful things to help them. For 2 years, my school has set up a club in order to promot ...
5 band It goes without saying that now in modern era, children are spending more time on video games while playing outdoor sports. There are several reasons behind this statement and I believe that it has negative impact on their mental and physical health. Commencing with the most prominent reason that why pupils are playing more video games. Firstly, In youngsters, there is a trend of playing games in their mobiles owing to they earn cash rewards and achieve good name in friend circle. In addition to, both parents of them are working for longer hours ...
Language is the road map of a culture. It tells you where its people come from and where they are going. Rita Mae Brown

Writing Correction
Online Prep Platform
Online Course
Speaking Assessment
Ace The IELTS
Target Band 7
Practice Tests Downloads
IELTS Success Formula
Essays Band 9 IELTS Writing Task 2 samples – IELTS Band 9 essays
Essays Band 8 IELTS Writing – samples of IELTS essays of Band 8
Essays Band 7 IELTS Writing – samples of IELTS essays of Band 7
Essays Band 6 IELTS Writing – samples of IELTS essays of Band 6
Essays Band 5 IELTS Writing – samples of IELTS essays of Band 5
Reports Band 9 IELTS Writing – samples of IELTS reports of Band 9 (Academic Writing Task 1)
Reports Band 8 IELTS Writing – samples of IELTS reports of Band 8
Reports Band 7 IELTS Writing – samples of IELTS reports of Band 7
Letters Band 9 IELTS Writing Task 1 – samples of IELTS letters of Band 9
Letters Band 8 IELTS Writing – samples of IELTS letters of Band 8
Letters Band 7 IELTS Writing – samples of IELTS letters of Band 7
Speaking Samples
Tests Samples
2023, 2024 IELTS questions
2022 IELTS questions
2021 IELTS questions
2020 IELTS questions
High Scorer’s Advice IELTS high achievers share their secrets
IELTS Results Competition
IELTS-Blog App

IELTS essay, topic: Some parents think that children must do house chores (opinion)

IELTS Essays - Band 9

This is a model response to a Writing Task 2 topic from High Scorer’s Choice IELTS Practice Tests book series (reprinted with permission). This answer is likely to score IELTS Band 9.

Set 2 General Training book, Practice Test 9

Writing Task 2

You should spend about 40 minutes on this task.

Write about the following topic:

Many parents give jobs to their children to do around the house in order to develop their characters and self-sufficiency. Discuss this idea and give your opinion.

Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your knowledge or experience.

You should write at least 250 words.

In many modern day families, it is a common aspect of family life that parents give jobs to their children to do around the house to develop their characters and a sense of self-sufficiency. This aspect can be looked at as having both positive and negative sides.

When parents give their children jobs or chores to do around the house, they make their children understand that they are part of a community. While this community is only within the family’s house, the lessons children learn from carrying out their chores are equally fitting for the global community they live in. Children are taught that they have to integrate into the global community and that in order for this community to work effectively, everyone must carry out their chores.

Furthermore, children learn about the concept of pride, as they are taught to be proud of what they have accomplished. Chores around the house additionally prepare children for living independently later on in life, as they acquire skills that are valuable for everyday life. I, personally, see this approach as very practical; helping my mother with cooking in my childhood and teenage years served me well, and living independently now I don’t have trouble preparing meals for myself and my housemates.

Although there are many supporters of this concept, some parents argue that children should not be given jobs to do around the house. They argue that children should be allowed to be children and not have any duties. In their opinion children should enjoy their childhood and should not have to deal with any of the responsibilities adults have to deal with.

In conclusion, I believe that giving children chores to carry out is a positive aspect of family life, as I think that it helps children to become independent and makes it easier for them to live by themselves later on in life.

Go here for more IELTS Band 9 Essays

IELTS essay, topic: Who should discipline the children, parents or the government? (discuss + opinion) This essay topic was seen in a recent IELTS test...
IELTS essay, topic: Should school children be given homework (opinion)? This is a model response to a Writing Task 2...
IELTS essay, topic: Is using physical force to discipline children acceptable (opinion)? This is a model response to a Writing Task 2...
IELTS essay, topic: Should boys and girls be educated separately (opinion)? This is a model response to a Writing Task 2...
IELTS Essay, topic: Should governments or teachers be responsible for what is to be taught in schools (opinion)? This is a model response to a Writing Task 2...

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

You are using an outdated browser. Please upgrade your browser to improve your experience.

In order to properly experience our website, please enable Javascript.

Find your home

Renters Rooms Entire Homes

The complete household chores list

Without a plan for keeping your house clean, it can seem like the to-do list is endless: the spice rack is impossible to navigate, the towels constantly need to be washed, there’s a weird stain in the cupboard by the stove. And everyone’s already busy this weekend. Nip this problem in the bud by creating a household chores list as soon as you move into your new home.

detergent bottle with sponges and notebook

Why a household chores list is important.

A household chores list helps you and the members of your household put upkeep on autopilot. Not only does creating one ensure that everything gets done on time, it also takes the guesswork out of navigating conversations about cleaning. It can be awkward to broach this subject with the people you live with, and if you haven’t practiced communicating about household tasks, you might be tempted to avoid it, eventually compounding the issue. That’s why creating this list (maybe as an addendum to your roommate agreement , if you have one) is essential.

Once your list is made, check out our guide to creating a roommate chore chart to split the responsibilities.

How to create a household chores list

Whether you live alone, with a partner, or with roommates, the process for creating a chore list is pretty consistent: You compile a comprehensive list of all the tidying and cleaning tasks that needs to be completed for your home to feel clean. If you live alone, you’ll compile this list yourself, according to your own standards. If you live with others, you’ll need to put your heads together to create a list that captures everyone’s preferences.

What to include on a household chores list

If you colive with others, you’ll want to include both personal chores and communal chores. Personal chores are things you need to do to keep your own space clean and tidy; communal chores are those that go towards the spaces you share.

You can organize your master list by room or type of task, but a more action-oriented method of organization is grouping by frequency. Everyone’s list will be a bit different depending on what type of space you live in and what’s important to the members of your household. Below are some common types of chores to get you started.

broccoli, rice, and meat packed in a glass container

Consistent household tasks

Some tasks are even more frequent than daily household chores . Decide which tasks fall under this category in your home and discuss expectations surrounding them. Some examples could include:

Meal preparation

Doing dishes after each meal

Removing shoes when you enter the home

Putting items in shared spaces like the living room away in their proper places

Cleaning up messes like hair in the bathroom, spills, or stray food scraps

Daily chores

Daily chores can also change depending on your individual needs, but here are some common ones.

Taking out the trash when it’s full

Taking the trash out for pickup, if required

Unloading, loading, and running the dishwasher if you have one

Sweeping the kitchen floor

Wiping down countertops

Squeegeeing shower doors and walls

Weekly chores

Your weekly chore list is probably the most important. This should consist of:

Cleaning the bathrooms, including:

Scrubbing sinks, tubs, showers, and (yes) toilets,

Sweeping and mopping the floor

Windexing mirrors

Cleaning the kitchen, including:

Removing items from countertops and cleaning the countertops with soap and water

Wiping down the outside of the items if they’re dirty

Cleaning the stovetop

Cleaning inside of the microwave

Cleaning out the fridge, throwing away food that’s gone bad and washing out containers that can be reused

Vacuuming and/or mopping floors

Dusting surfaces

Laundering and replacing dish and hand towels

Maintaining your personal space, including changing your sheets, tidying up your room, and sorting your mail

If you’ve decided to do shared shopping, making a grocery list and visiting the store, then putting grocery items away

shirts hanging in a closet on wood hanger

Monthly or seasonal chores

Some tasks aren’t realistic to accomplish once a week, but setting a monthly reminder can help maintain your home over time. Some of these things fall under the category of deep cleaning , which you might want to do monthly or even seasonally. We’re talking about stuff like:

Cleaning inside and outside of kitchen cabinets

Scrubbing out the fridge

Reorganizing and wiping down the pantry and cupboards in the kitchen

Reorganizing closets, storage cupboards, and medicine cabinets

Laundering curtains, carpets, furniture, and other fabrics throughout your home

Tackling tough dirt that has accumulated on floors, walls, baseboards, and tile

Checking for mold and mildew in bathrooms and scrubbing grout on tile floors and walls

Washing windows inside and out (if you’re able to do so safely)

Dusting difficult-to-reach spots like light fixtures

Living in an organized space free of grime and germs will improve your mental and physical health, and communicating with your roommates about chores will improve your relationships. It can even be cathartic and satisfying to put away your phone for a few hours, blast some tunes, and make your new home sparkle. So don’t fear the household chores list—instead, fill it up and learn to love checking off those to-dos.

Having a cleaning service come monthly reduces your chore-load—leaving more time for doing the things you love. Bungalow offers private rooms in shared homes where monthly cleaning is always on the books—and included in your monthly rental cost. Find a Bungalow near you .

Ready to find your next home?

Move-in ready homes and a built-in community so you can feel at home, together — wherever you are.

The Wages for Housework Campaign Is As Relevant As Ever

'it's an invitation to do politics again.', by sophie k rosa, 21 march 2022.

“Hey, fellas! Could you afford $48,000 to hire these women? Because that’s what a housewife is worth.” So reads the headline of a 1970s edition of US newspaper the National Enquirer . The calculation quoted in the article takes into account the numerous jobs housewives typically fulfil – including childcarer, cleaner, chef, dishwasher, nurse and family counsellor.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the ‘wages for housework’ (WfH) campaign, an internationalist, anti-capitalist, feminist movement that rejects an economic order in which women’s essential domestic work goes unrecognised, undervalued, unremunerated or underpaid.

The WfH campaign brought a powerful new perspective to the feminist movement, both in Britain and around the world – a perspective that its original organisers, reflecting on their experiences with Novara Media, argue is just as urgent as ever.

‘We had to invent a totally different style of politics.’

The WfH campaign was launched by the International Feminist Collective at the 1972 International Feminist Conference in Padova, Italy. Within two years, it was holding its own international conference in Brooklyn, New York, with WfH groups organising in the US, Canada, the UK, Italy and beyond. “The headquarters of these groups were […] creative outlets where women learnt to do the most diverse things,” explains WfH organiser Mariarosa Dalla Costa.

The campaign broke with old ways of ‘doing politics’, another WfH organiser, Leopoldina Fortunati, recalls fondly: “The politics made by men was essentially boring […] we had to invent a totally different style […] in which there was a lot of joy – the joy to stay together with the other women, to overcome the isolation of the home.”

Whilst WfH incorporated diverse perspectives and struggles, its uniting demand was clear: that caring labour, mostly done by women, is not biological destiny or ‘love’, but – under capitalism – work that should receive a wage.

This claim was, and still is, radical. Women’s unpaid labour is not accounted for in a country’s GDP, and is not respected as ‘real work’. Indeed, it is erased, says WfH organiser Selma James.

The ‘housework’ the campaign referred to acted as shorthand for all feminised labour, in and outside of the home. This socially reproductive and affective labour – the work that births new workers and keeps people alive and well enough to, in turn, work (i.e. fucking, feeding and not hurting men’s feelings) – went unacknowledged by both the patriarchal left and the labour movement. WfH activists set out to change this.

All women are workers.

The WfH campaign insisted that all women were workers who kept the cogs of capitalism turning, and that all households were workplaces. The demand for a wage was, in part, symbolic: what mattered was that women’s gruelling and thankless work was recognised, such that its conditions could be fought against – and, indeed, ultimately refused. “The question of housework,” says Dalla Costa, was “a question that determined conditions for all women.”

“We are teachers and nurses and secretaries and prostitutes and actresses and childcare workers and hostesses and waitresses and cooks and cleaning ladies and workers of every variety,” read one WfH pamphlet entitled ‘NOTICE TO ALL GOVERNMENTS’ . “We have sweated while you have grown rich. Now we want back the wealth we have produced.”

The campaign provided a platform for militant feminist struggle against women’s oppression. It was a political perspective committed to – as WfH organiser Silvia Federici wrote in her essay ‘Wages Against Housework’ in 1975 – “ demystifying and subverting the role to which women have been confined in capitalist society”. This perspective allowed for women’s everyday lives to be reframed as the location of political struggle: “They say it is love. We say it is unwaged work. They call it frigidity. We call it absenteeism. Every miscarriage is a work accident.”

A fight on many fronts.

Recognising women’s labour under capitalist patriarchy as work had far-ranging implications. As such, the campaign fought on many fronts: campaigning for women’s shelters and sex worker rights, lesbian liberation and free childcare, reproductive autonomy and sexual freedom, and affordable housing and public transport provision.

As Dalla Costa puts it: “The demand for wages for housework, first and foremost, offered a perspective that allowed for a new way of initiating or formulating a whole host of struggles taking place in our neighbourhoods, in our homes, but also in hospitals, factories [and] in the service sector. These struggles represented the social articulation of the demand for wages for housework.”

Looking at reproductive autonomy from the WfH perspective, for example, allowed liberation in the domestic sphere to become part of the anti-capitalist struggle. Articulating this, one pamphlet read : “When they need more workers, we women are forbidden any form of contraception […] When the workers we produce are not disciplined enough, or when we claim some money for the cost of raising them – that is, when WE are not disciplined enough – they sterilise us.”

Reconceiving the home as a workplace also meant domestic violence could be understood in the context of capitalism’s exploitation of both men and women. In ‘Wages Against Housework’, Federici linked men’s exploitation at work to their exploitation of and violence against women inside the home , arguing that massifying women’s well-honed individual modes of resistance into class struggle was crucial for the feminist movement:

“ You beat your wife and vent your rage against her when you are frustrated or overtired by your work or when you are defeated in a struggle (to go into a factory is itself a defeat). The more the man serves and is bossed around, the more he bosses around […] (Women have always found ways of fighting back, or getting back at them, but always in an isolated and privatised way. The problem, then, becomes how to bring this struggle out of the kitchen and bedroom and into the streets.)”

Making the invisible visible.

The WfH perspective flew in the face of other strands of feminism that insisted women’s liberation rested upon their entering the job market, leaving ‘housework’ to low-paid domestic workers, often racialised women. Rather than ‘solving’ patriarchy by slotting more women into higher paid roles outside of the home – inevitably leaving most women to continue unpaid or low-wage work – the campaign insisted that the work that women were already doing must be recognised, respected and recompensed. The demand acted as a mechanism by which to render feminised work visible so that it could be effectively struggled against – in order to, ultimately, build a feminist future in which such caring labour would be collectivised.

In general, on the radical left, “the question of women was completely ignored”, says Fortunati. The feminist movement had identified that recognising domestic labour as work “was fundamental to beginning a revolution [which centred the] political perspective of women”. Dalla Costa, too, was drawn to WfH after recognising that feminism was largely absent from the militant political groups she was organising with: “I realised that while I was fighting with everything I had for various subjects, one among these subjects was missing: women.”

WfH’s feminism challenged a capitalist chauvinism that, despite being “really dependent on [women’s] work […] denied it was work”, says James. In their essay ‘Counter-Planning from the Kitchen: Wages for Housework – A Perspective on Capital and the Left’, Federici and Nicole Cox argue: “Since the left has accepted the wage as the dividing line between work and non-work, production and parasitism, potential power and powerlessness, the immense amount of unwaged labor that women perform for capital in the home has escaped their analysis and strategy.” This perspective, they say, “is functional to our enslavement to the home, which, in the absence of a wage, has always appeared as an act of love”.

An international, intersectional campaign.

In one way or another, the WfH cause was relevant to women everywhere, and the internationalism of the campaign was a central source of its power, says James. Whilst the women’s movement, broadly speaking, entailed “a kind of provincialism which was unavoidable [because women were isolated]”, the campaign sought to facilitate organising among women across the world. “We spent a lot of our money on international calling; we had pennies but we put them into phone calls,” she says. “There was not going to be any campaign that was anti-racist unless it was international.” For organisers in the Global North, she continues, it was crucial to recognise “the enormous work that [women were doing] in the Global South”, given that they were working days of “16, 17 hours”.

In today’s vocabulary, the WfH campaign might be understood as aspiring to practise ‘intersectionality’. Whilst recognising shared oppression, organisers tended to place importance on women’s multiple identities, and how those identities differentiated their struggles. “Every woman who came into the campaign brought her own story and that’s how we educated ourselves,” says James.

In this context, autonomous groups began forming around the central campaign. International Black Women for Wages for Housework, which was founded in 1975, described itself in a pamphlet as “a network of Black/Third World women claiming reparations for all our unwaged work including slavery, imperialism and neo-colonialism”. The group wrote that it was “campaigning on welfare, immigration controls, police illegality, health, rape and domestic violence, nuclear power/weapons and ecological devastation integrates Black/Third World, women’s and green issues”.

Meanwhile, Wages Due Lesbians, which was founded in the same year, highlighted and fought against the specific oppressions lesbians faced, which were not always accounted for in some of the ways WfH was framed. The group, for example, expressed shared struggles with sex workers, writing :

“As lesbian women we, like prostitute women, refuse to accept that it is women’s ‘nature’ to sleep with men and to sleep with them ‘for love’ — i.e . for free. And like prostitute women we face continual harassment by police, employers, schools, individual men, and all those in authority for the crime of shaping our sexual life according to our own needs, of taking something for ourselves […] Women, lesbian or ‘straight’, prostitute or not, are everywhere houseworkers, the servants of the world.”

Sex workers, in turn, set up their own autonomous groups – for example, the English Collective of Prostitutes (ECP), which was founded by two immigrant sex workers in 1975 and still organises under this name today. The ECP campaigned for the “abolition of the prostitution laws; for human, legal and civil rights for prostitute women; and for higher benefits, student grants, wages and other resources so that no woman is forced by poverty into sex with anyone”. In 1982, ECP activists occupied a church in King’s Cross, London , to protest police racism and violence.

In 1975 the ECP started as an autonomous organisation within the Wages for Housework Campaign. At the time the WFHC was one of the few women’s organisations that was ready to work with sex workers and help us defend our rights. #ECParchive https://t.co/si24WP4R5n pic.twitter.com/D0rwV1U6kZ — English Collective of Prostitutes ♀️ 🏳️‍⚧️ (@ProstitutesColl) March 17, 2022

These groups intended to address the differences between women’s experiences – and, in doing so, attend to the complicated power dynamics in the wider campaign.

That said, maintaining a united front was also important. To that end, groups identified the places where their struggles overlapped along the framework of WfH in order to build solidarity. In its foundational manifesto ‘Fucking Is Work’, Wages Due Lesbians explained the shared struggle of housewives and lesbians:

“Wages for Housework recognises that doing cleaning, raising children, taking care of men, is not women’s biological destiny. Lesbianism recognises that heterosexual love and marriage is not women’s biological destiny. Both are definitions of women’s roles by the state and for the advantage of the state.”

This spirit of solidarity informed the campaign’s key tenets, says James: “if you want to fight, we will fight alongside you”, “always take the struggle of others into consideration” and “we do not scab on each other”.

Given its ambitions, it’s hardly surprising that the political organising of WfH was “intense”, says Fortunati. “There were so many things to do to enlarge and strengthen the movement.” This included co-writing, event planning, demonstrations, public assemblies, leafleting and postering. “We were involved every day, and we worked very intensively for a decade.”

One thing that made WfH special, says Dalla Costa, is the way that the campaign combined “theoretical training with a serious commitment to political militancy and action”. Whilst analysis was vital, the campaign steered clear of “academic debate” to instead focus on “mobilising to instigate a social transformation that would allow women to redefine themselves and their condition”.

‘Women’s labour is worth more than capitalism could ever pay.’

While the WfH campaign did not ultimately win a concrete wage for women’s unpaid labour, that was never really the point, says feminist researcher, organiser and mother Claire English. She argues that the campaign was successful in many ways, particularly in terms of reminding people that “women’s labour is worth more than capitalism could ever pay”. WfH was, she says, “a wrench to open up our eyes to how completely unsustainable society is when it relies on the endless capacity of women”. The fact that it is most likely “impossible under neoliberal capitalism” to pay women for their work in the home “really just lays bare why we’re making the demand in the first place”.

Whilst women’s unwaged work still goes undervalued and unrecognised to this day, there has been more formal recognition of its existence since WfH. The United Nations argued for the importance of women’s unwaged labour in national economic analyses in 1985, writing : “The remunerated and, in particular, the unremunerated contributions of women to all aspects and sectors of development should be recognised, and appropriate efforts should be made to measure and reflect these contributions in national accounts and economic statistics and in the gross national product.”

More broadly – and arguably more importantly – WfH helped instigate a shift in feminist consciousness. Thanks to the campaign, women’s burdens and agonies are no longer merely a private matter: now, they are a part of the political terrain. For many women, this was a critical shift in perspective, opening up possibilities for collective resistance and transformation.

Overcoming fragmentation.

Since the 1970s, the global feminist movement has had many victories in areas that WfH was fighting, including in reproductive autonomy. T he campaign also “paved the way for conversations around things like UBI because it’s about making a payment that people can live on without tracking their every move in exchange for it”, says English.

But whilst WfH laid out new terms for feminism, there is much work to be done to claw back its radical remit. Today’s liberal feminism – in which the existence of so-called girlboss CEOs is lauded as liberation – is worlds away from the radical anti-capitalist, feminist politics of WfH. This has been true since the 1980s, says Dalla Costa, when “feminism completely expunged material conditions from its vocabulary”.

With that in mind, it is vital that the feminist movement today finds ways to overcome this fragmentation. It could be helpful to find places where the two ideologies overlap, says English, who highlights the fact that WfH has been considered “the very first recognition of emotional labour in the domestic sphere”. In this way, parallels can be drawn with liberal feminism , she argues, which is interested in the ways in which women’s disproportionate ’emotional labour’ often goes unrecognised.

The crux, then, says English, is “convincing liberal feminism that the emotional load needs to be collectivised, and that we need to organise against it”, as opposed to pursuing only individualised solutions via, for example, marital disputes and ‘outsourcing’ domestic work to poorer, racialised women.

‘An invitation to do politics again.’

50 years on from its inception, the WfH campaign serves as an essential reminder that any feminism worth its name must be for all women, and centred on resisting the roots of oppression – which lie in patriarchal capitalism – rather than merely tinkering around the edges. The 1970s, according to Dalla Costa, was an era characterised by a “social ferment [… ] in which everything was up for grabs from the perspective of building a better world”. While it might be harder to grasp that optimism today, “at a time marked by the immiseration of the female condition, in the context of relentless precarity, low wages and the winds of war”, it is all the more urgent and vital that we try.

And what’s more, there is no need to start from scratch. The WfH campaign – and the radical feminist tradition it is a part of – lives on in various forms. Many of the autonomous groups still operate, sometimes under different names; Wages Due Lesbians, for instance, is now QueerStrike. Meanwhile, in the UK, the Global Women’s Strike and the Women’s Strike Assembly are fighting on the same terrain, with a focus on the strike as a mode of resistance.

English has organised with the Women’s Strike Assembly, on a series of ‘My Mum is on Strike’ events, “premised on viewing mothering work as a form of labour that has to be denaturalised, recognised and collectivised”. The strike, as a tactic, she explains – like the demand for wages – is a mechanism that, in its disruption and shock factor, calls “people to look at just how impossible the situation for women is when so much of the basic functioning of society rests on how much can be extracted from our exhausted bodies and minds”.

The original WfH organisers who spoke to Novara Media are united in the belief that today’s feminist movement must look to the campaign for revolutionary inspiration. On its 50th anniversary, WfH “is an invitation to do politics again”, says Fortunati. This means centring what the campaign was really about, says James; creating “a world that begins with caring and not with profiteering”. In striving for this, we must, as Federici wrote, “ call work what is work so that eventually we might rediscover what is love”.

Sophie K Rosa is a freelance journalist and the author of Radical Intimacy.

Tweet article
Share article on Facebook
Email this article
Post to Reddit

Report: Staff Are Occupying Northern Ireland’s Only Women’s Hostel to Stop It Being Shut Down

By anna cafolla.

Regina Coeli House, Northern Ireland’s only women-only hostel, is facing imminent closure. Its staff, however, aren’t having it. Anna Cafolla reports.

Opinion: Navigating Sex and Desire Is a Headfuck When You’re Black, Disabled and a Woman

By the triple cripples, obituary: bell hooks was more than a quote for your twitter, by diane enobabor, build people- powered media., build people-powered media..

We’re up against huge power and influence. Our supporters keep us entirely free to access. We don’t have any ad partnerships or sponsored content.

We are always working to improve this website for our users. To do this we use usage data facilitated by cookies and external services. For more information read our Privacy Policy

Share full article

A robot version of a Mary Poppins-like nanny holds an umbrella and an oversized bag in its hands.

Critic’s Notebook

How a Virtual Assistant Taught Me to Appreciate Busywork

A new category of apps promises to relieve parents of drudgery, with an assist from A.I. But a family’s grunt work is more human, and valuable, than it seems.

Credit... Illustration by Cari Vander Yacht

Supported by

By Amanda Hess

Published April 24, 2024 Updated April 25, 2024

I recently downloaded a virtual assistant that promised to ease the burdens of modern parenthood. The app is called Yohana , and it offered to handle a pile of tasks on my behalf. It suggested enlisting a professional to wash my windows, scheduling a lesson with a “private sports coach” or planning a “stylish and sustainable” Earth Day party featuring décor, recipes, activities and party favors, none of which interested me. Finally it volunteered to produce a “chef-curated menu” for Passover.

Well, sure. I was already planning on attending a friend’s Seder, and at least this task did not involve Yohana siccing an expert on me or making me host an elaborate event. So, I agreed to the Passover idea. Yohana assigned the “to-do” to a faceless assistant identified only by a first name. The next day, she sent along a confusing list of menu options that included a recipe for ham mini quiches — a provocative choice.

Yohana is one of a growing crew of virtual-assistant apps that combine artificial intelligence and human labor to help parents manage their family lives. For $129 a month, Yohana promises to “offload joy-stealing tasks, improve your family’s well-being, and find more breathing room in your schedule.” Ohai ($26.99 a month), a text-based “A.I. household assistant,” wants to “lighten the mental load of Chief Household Officers,” and Milo ($40/month, with a wait list), an “A.I. co-pilot,” hopes to calm “every form of family chaos.”

These apps are styled like cutesy helpmeets, and their names — Yohana, Ohai, Milo — would be at home on a Brooklyn day care roster. Though pitched to “busy parents,” they implicitly target affluent working mothers who are struggling to manage household tasks on top of work and child care, and who might even be convinced to spend some (though not too much) extra cash to make them go away. But when I gave Yohana a spin, I found that I did not want to do the things she can manage, and that she cannot manage the things I want to do. She made me start to believe that the busywork I might delegate to a machine is actually more human, and valuable, than I realized.

Mothers have long been served fantasies about how robots will relieve the drudgery of housework. In the first episode of the animated sitcom “The Jetsons,” from 1962, Jane Jetson tires of pressing all the buttons that automatically cook and clean for her, so she buys Rosie the robot maid to run her smart house instead. In 1965, General Electric urged housewives to “Let a Mobile Maid Dishwasher give you priceless time for the wife-and-mother jobs that really count.”

And yet automation has failed to eliminate the burdens of those “wife-and-mother jobs.” In a culture that promotes ruthless competition and intensive mothering, a mother’s tasks (the ones that “really count”) are capable of expanding endlessly.

The feminist campaign to demand “wages for housework,” which also captured the maternal imagination in the 1960s and ’70s, represented the flip side of the automation fantasy. As Barbara Ehrenreich documented in her 2000 essay “Maid to Order,” that campaign dissolved as professional women instead opted to pay other women to clean their houses for them, often under lousy conditions. Now a modern wealthy mother can have it all: She can use her phone to command a robot-esque “assistant” to hire a human cleaner on her behalf, without having to actually look anyone in the face.

In their brand copy, these apps speak of lifting loads — “mental loads,” “invisible loads.” They suggest that the central challenge of parenthood is bureaucratic. Families should be “about love, not logistics,” Milo says.

But in a bid to banish bureaucracy, these services add layer upon layer. They suggest we hire more helpers, schedule more activities, plan more events. (An Earth Day party with recyclable décor? No. Private sports coaching? Absolutely not!) When I signed up for Ohai, it texted me every morning, asking if it could add a workout to my schedule.

I don’t need help scheduling more things to do; I need to do less. Often these services suggest that users throw money at that problem (which is not very helpful if one of your problems is that you do not have enough money). The apps transform parents from workers into consumers, translating our to-do lists into shopping lists. Somebody is still performing our “joy-stealing” tasks, and it may be a call center worker or one of the many other invisible laborers who make artificial intelligence systems seem to run automatically.

The boundary between the human and the artificial is slippery; Yohana emphasizes that it employs “actual humans (not A.I. chatbots) that can do the grunt work,” though according to Forbes, those humans are using generative A.I . to assist them with our tasks. When these services style themselves as “worker bees,” “secret helpers” or “fairy godmothers,” they lean on the iconography of fantasy to obscure the grimmer reality of farming out your “grunt work” to an anonymized labor force.

The work that these services hope to eradicate (or at least obscure) is feminized. It’s “women’s work,” and indeed, most of my Yohana helpers had feminine first names. One of the most helpful things a virtual assistant can do is assign family burdens more equitably among its members, a duty commonly demeaned as “nagging.”

Last year, Meghan Verena Joyce, the chief executive of another task delegation service, Duckbill, argued that “with its capabilities for efficiency and customization,” artificial intelligence “could play a crucial role in easing the societal and economic burdens that disproportionately affect women.”

In an illustration on Yohana’s website, a typical user is portrayed as a bespectacled woman who wears a baby in a sling, anchors a square of wrapping paper under a foot, balances a bowl of dog food on a lifted leg, stirs a pot with one hand and types on a computer with the other. She resembles Rosie from the Jetsons, each mechanical limb firing autonomously in order to labor more efficiently. We are familiar with A.I. helpers, like Apple’s Siri, which are modeled after feminine stereotypes, but here it feels as if the opposite is happening: A mother has been recast as a robotic being, her work dismissed as rote and easily outsourced.

In the few weeks that I spent as a virtual-assistant taskmaster, I realized that much of the busywork claimed by the apps is actually quite personal, often rewarding and occasionally transformative.

For instance, when I asked Yohana where I could shop locally for a child’s birthday party, it spat out links to Amazon toys instead. And when I asked if it could find a worker-owned cooperative cleaning service (there are many in New York City ), it did not; instead it linked me to the profile of an app, Quicklyn, hosted on another app, Thumbtack. An app can suggest a volunteer opportunity that welcomes children, but it can’t do what my neighbor did, which was add me to the WhatsApp group organizing mutual aid for the nearby migrant shelter. It can direct me to a national database of registered caregivers but not to the teenage babysitter who lives three floors above me.

When I alerted my Yohana assistants to some of these issues — the Passover ham, the Amazon links — they dutifully fixed them, though it’s hard to imagine a worse use of my time than reforming the stranger I’d hired to fix my life through my phone. These services may be able to plug users into corporate-mediated experiences, but no amount of machine learning can simulate neighborhood bonds. “Grunt work” can be central to building community, but only if you do it yourself.

Amanda Hess is a critic at large for the Culture section of The Times, covering the intersection of internet and pop culture. More about Amanda Hess

IMAGES

Housework Division: Spouses Sharing Housework Equally Argumentative
A sample paragraph about housework- whose job is it?
Male and Female Attitudes to Housework
a simple paragraph about housework
The importance of homework FINAL ESSAY by Javier Rivera
Household review!!

VIDEO

Housework Hangout: Making Chores Enjoyable with Friends Vid3
Essay On My House In English// My House Essay
My house essay in english 10 lines || About 10 lines on my house
Your housework check-in is to take photos with props. Our housework check-in is to clean up once an

COMMENTS

Essay on Household Chores
500 Words Essay on Household Chores Introduction. Household chores are tasks that we do to keep our homes neat and tidy. These chores include cleaning, cooking, washing dishes, doing laundry, and many more. They are part of our daily life and play a vital role in maintaining a healthy and organized environment.
Finding the Value of Housework
In fact, Ahlander and Bahr argue, in many ways housework can have elements of a calling—work that combines activity and personal character, helping to bond a person to a community. Thus, one father who was a participant in a 1989 study noted that he "would sometimes derive pleasure from cleaning the bathroom or picking up a sock if he looked at it as an act of caring for his family."
Housework Essay
Housework: The Key To All Successful Relationships. When thinking of the term housework, even in today's evolved society, it is sometimes known to be an activity that females in the family are generally responsible for. However, housework is not only defined by cleanliness and tidiness of a home, but also includes the up-keep, and maintenance.
Family Work and Housework: The Chores That Bind Us
Check out the latest podcast episode Listen. Family Work. The daily work of families—the ordinary hands-on labor of sustaining life—has the power to bind us together. By Kathleen Slaugh Bahr and Cheri A. Loveless in the Spring 2000 Issue. Illustrations by Rich Lillash.
Opinion
By Juan Vidal. Mr. Vidal is a Colombian-American writer. I don't know when my passion for certain household chores began. I think mainly of the small things, the quiet and seemingly mundane ...
The Household Work Men and Women Do, and Why
They just don't do as much as their female partners. Men do a little more at home — they've doubled the time they spend on housework since 1965, and women now do less — but women still do ...
Household Chores
Share full article. 37. Natalie Andrewson. By Natalie Proulx. Sept. 20, 2018. Do you think children should do household chores? Or should their time and energy go toward school and extracurricular ...
10 Reasons Why Household Chores Are Important
6. Chores may make your child more accountable. If your child realizes the consequences of making a mess, he or she may think twice, knowing that being more tidy in the present will help make chores easier. 7. Develop fine and gross motor skills and planning abilities.
Managing Household Responsibilities Fairly and Effectively
Stuff requires constant upkeep, organizing and re-organizing, and maintenance. When we reduced the number of items in our home we eliminated many hours of housework per month. The Foundation of Fair Division. Before you can fairly divide household chores, you'll need to establish a clear understanding of what tasks are involved.
IELTS Task 1 Essay: Household Work
IELTS Task 1 Essay: Household Work. The bar chart below shows the average duration of housework women did (unemployed, part-time employed and full-time) when compared to men who had full-time work in the UK between 1985 and 2005. Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant.
Critical Essay on Benefits of Doing Household Chores
Chores are a powerful indicator in life due to the strong effects it gives on the kids who do them. Through chores, patience can be learned by kids due to the patience needed in doing chores because it requires time. Self-dedication can also be learned due to the need for a goal and the cause of the doing of chores.
Sharing chores a key to good marriage, say most married adults
Among married adults, men are slightly more likely than women to say sharing household chores is very important to a successful marriage (63% vs. 58%). And those ages 18 to 29 (67%) and ages 30 to 49 (63%) are more likely to say sharing chores is very important, compared with 57% of those ages 50 to 64 and 56% of those 65 and older.
Housework: Who Did, Does or Will Do It, and How Much Does It Matter?
Men's housework time more than doubled between 1965 and 1998/9, when it reached a high of 11 hours per week, and then dropped to 10 hours a week by 2009/10. 2 In 2009/10, women are estimated to do 1.6 times the amount of housework as men, on average (with wives averaging 1.7 times the housework of husbands, and married mothers averaging 1.9 ...
IELTS essay Benefits of doing and sharing housework
In my opinion, doing and sharing housework has enormous benefits. I agree with doing housework has many advantages. Our house will be cleaner, orderly if we clean the floor every day. We will feel more comfortable after a busy day when we come back to a clean house. According to psychologists, most people usually doing housework tend to rarely ...
Why It Matters That Women Do Most of the Housework
Girls may do more housework, but they don't get as much pay for it. Sixty-seven percent of boys get allowances, but just 59 percent of girls do. The study finding that girls do two more hours of ...
Opinion
Women and Housework. A visiting nurse says her female patients apologize for the condition of their homes, while the men do not. To the Editor: Re " This Gender Gap Can't Be Stressed Enough ...
IELTS essay, topic: Some parents think that children must do house
IELTS essay, topic: Some parents think that children must do house chores (opinion) IELTS Essays - Band 9; This is a model response to a Writing Task 2 topic from High Scorer's Choice IELTS Practice Tests book series (reprinted with permission). This answer is likely to score IELTS Band 9.
PDF WAGES I AGAINST HOUSEWORK
housework to a thing, a lump of money, instead of viewing it as a political perspective. The difference between these two standpOints is enormous. To view wages for housework as a thing rather than a perspective is to detach the end result of our struggle from the struggle itself and to miss
Why men should share equally in housework
Women spend a greater number of hours doing household and caregiving duties, which decreases the number of hours they can work for pay. Even for full-time workers, men worked on average 8.3 hours ...
The Women of Wages for Housework
Reviewed. Wages for Housework: The New York Committee 1972-1977. By Silvia Federici and Arlen Austin, eds. Buy this book. To the women of the Wages for Housework movement, the Icelandic strike ...
The Complete Household Chores List
Weekly chores. Your weekly chore list is probably the most important. This should consist of: Cleaning the bathrooms, including: Scrubbing sinks, tubs, showers, and (yes) toilets, Sweeping and mopping the floor. Windexing mirrors. Cleaning the kitchen, including: Removing items from countertops and cleaning the countertops with soap and water.
The Wages for Housework Campaign Is As Relevant As Ever
In their essay 'Counter-Planning from the Kitchen: Wages for Housework - A Perspective on Capital and the Left', Federici and Nicole Cox argue: "Since the left has accepted the wage as the dividing line between work and non-work, production and parasitism, potential power and powerlessness, the immense amount of unwaged labor that women ...
The Lockdown Showed How the Economy Exploits Women. She Already Knew
Federici's essay "Wages Against Housework," published in 1975, was an early, impassioned manifesto for the movement and remains one of its best-known texts. "To say that we want wages for ...
May Day Is About Confronting the Capitalist System That ...
This essay on May Day is set to appear in Richard Gilman-Opalsky's forthcoming book Imaginary Power, Real Horizons: ... participated in the Wages for Housework movement along with other important activists and writers, including Leopoldina Fortunati, Selma James and Mariarosa Dalla Costa. Wages for Housework highlighted that so much of women ...
How a Virtual Assistant Taught Me to Appreciate Busywork
Mothers have long been served fantasies about how robots will relieve the drudgery of housework. In the first episode of the animated sitcom "The Jetsons," from 1962, Jane Jetson tires of ...