homemaker

Young Housewife, Oil on canvas. The Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia.

Housewife is a term used to describe a married woman whose main occupation is running the family home—caring for her children, cooking, cleaning, etc.—and who does not work outside the home^[1]. Merriam Webster describes a housewife as a married woman who is in charge of her household. Homemaker is a mainly American^[2][3] gender-neutral term for a housewife or a stay-at-home dad.

The term is sometimes used in derogatory sense, contrasted with a career woman.

The term has been used since the 18th century to refer to a small sewing kit, and is still used to describe a personal sewing kit used by soldiers and others, usually written and pronounced "hussif" in Britain.

Multicultural norms

In rural studies, the word "housewife" is occasionally used to refer to the person who does the majority of the chores within a farm's compound as opposed to field and livestock work^{[citation needed]}.

India

Being a diverse country, India has different approaches in different ethnic groups.

In a Hindu family, the head of the family is the Griha Swami(Lord of the House) and his wife is the Griha Swamini(Lady of the House). The Sanskrit words Grihast and Grihasta perhaps come closest to describing the entire gamut of activities and roles undertaken by the householder or housewife. Grih is the Sanskrit root for house or home; Grihasta and Grihast are derivatives of this root, as is Grihastya. The couple lives in the state called Grihastashram or family system and together they nurture the family and help its members (both young and old) through the travails of life. They are a housewife team. The woman who increments the family tree and protects the procreated wealth of the family is described as the Grihalakshmi (the wealth of the house) and Grihashoba (the glory of the house). The elders of the family are known as Grihshreshta. The husband or wife may engage in countless other activities which may be social, religious, political or economic in nature for the ultimate welfare of the family and society. However, their unified status as a householder or housewife is the nucleus from within which they operate in society. This 'status', as housewives, anchors them in society and provides meaning to their activities within the social, religious, political and economic framework of their world. However, as India is modernising, lots of women are in employment, particularly in the larger cities such as Mumbai or Delhi, where most women will work.

In Muslim families, use of the term housewife (or its equivalent) is uncommon, even though housewives are very common and stay-at-home husbands are extremely rare. Muslim society sets different expectations for the husband and wife, but respects their individuality. Families are generally viewed as sets and not units.

China

In imperial China (excluding periods of the Tang dynasty when women had higher status in society), women were bound to homemaking by the doctrines of Confucianism and cultural norms. Generally, girls did not attend school and, therefore, spent the day following their mothers and female relatives in household chores (for example, cooking and cleaning), which would assist them after their marriages. In most cases, the husband was alive and able to work, so the wife was almost always forbidden to take a job and mainly spent her days at home or doing other domestic tasks. As Confucianism spread across East Asia, this social norm was also observed in Korea, Japan and Vietnam.

After the founding of the Republic of China in 1911, these norms were gradually loosened and many women were able to enter the workforce. Shortly thereafter, a growing number of females began to be permitted to attend schools; China's literacy rate rose to 85% for females in just a few years' time.^[4] Starting with the rule of the People's Republic of China in 1949, all women were freed from compulsory family roles. During the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, some women were required by the government to do heavy work that they were not physically suited for. This policy was later abolished.

In modern China, housewives are no longer as common, especially in the largest cities and other urban areas. Nearly all women work simply because one person's income is insufficient to support the family, a decision made easier by the fact that it is common for Chinese grandparents to watch after their grandchildren until they are old enough to go to school. Nonetheless, the number of Chinese housewives has been steadily rising in recent years as China's economy expands.

Formal education

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In previous decades, there were a large number of mandatory courses for young women to learn the skills of housework. In high school^[where?], courses included sewing, cooking, nutrition, home economics, family and consumer science (also known as F.A.C.S) and food and cooking hygiene. More recently, these courses have been mostly abolished, and many people of both sexes in high school and college would be more likely to explore resources^[vague] on the more academic topics of child development, child psychology and managing children's behaviour^{[citation needed]}.

Modern mothers

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Some contemporary women are leaving the paid workforce and concentrating full-time on child-rearing; particularly through their child(ren)'s early years (before entering kindergarten). There is considerable variability within the stay-at-home mother population with regard to their intent to return to the paid workforce. Some plan to work from their homes, some will do part-time work, some intend to return to part or full-time work when their children have reached school age, some may increase their skill sets by returning to higher education, and others may find it economically feasible to refrain from entering (or re-entering) the paid workforce.

Similarly, there is considerable variation in the stay-at-home mother's attitude towards domestic work not related to caring for children. Some may embrace a traditional role of housewife, cooking and cleaning in addition to caring for children. Others see their primary role as that of child-care providers, supporting their children's physical, intellectual, and emotional development while sharing or outsourcing other aspects of home care

Economics

Some feminists^[5][6], and non-feminist economists (particularly proponents of historical materialism) note that the monetary contribution of housewives' work to society is ignored in standard formulations of economic output, such as GDP or employment figures. Housewives work many unrecorded hours a week, while depending for money on their husbands' employment.

See also

• Gender roles in agriculture
• Good Wife's Guide
• Home and family blog
• Soccer mom

^[7]

References

Further reading

• Campbell, D'Ann. Women at War with America: Private Lives in a Patriotic Era (1984), on World War II
• Draznin, Yaffa Claire. Victorian London's Middle-Class Housewife: What She Did All Day (2001) 227pp
• McMillan, James F. Housewife or Harlot: The Place of Women in French Society, 1870-1940 (1981) 229pp
• Ogden, Annegret S. The Great American Housewife: From Helpmate to Wage Earner, 1776-1986 (1987)
• Palmer, Phyllis. Housewives and Domestic Servants in the United States, 1920-1945. (1990)
• Ramey, Valerie A., “Time Spent in Home Production in the Twentieth-Century United States: New Estimates from Old Data,” Journal of Economic History, 69 (March 2009), 1–47.
• Robertson, Una A. Illustrated History of the Housewife, 1650-1950 (1997) 218pp on Britain
• Sim, Alison. Tudor Housewife, (1996), on 1480 to 1609
• Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher. Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England, 1650-1750 (1982)

External links

Look up homemaker in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Home Economics Archive: Tradition, Research, History (HEARTH), An e-book collection of over 1,000 classic books on home economics spanning 1850 to 1950, created by Cornell University's Mann Library.
• Homemaking at the Open Directory Project