Editing Homemaking (section)

== Marriage ==

=== 19th century ===
In North America, early 19th-century ideals required homemaking be the responsibility of the woman; "the wife is properly supposed to be the light and centre of the home."<ref name=":1">{{Cite book|url=http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/35963?msg=welcome_stranger|title=Courtship and Marriage, and the Gentle Art of Home-Making|last=Swan|first=Annie S.|date=2011-04-25|language=en}}</ref> Traditional wives who stayed home and did not work for pay were required by social ideals to create and maintain a peaceful space to provide to her husband and children. For women in a pre-modern environment, "it is the duty and privilege and solemn responsibility, which make this art of home-making more interesting and important to her than any other art in the world."<ref name=":1" /> Author of these statements, Annie Swan was not alone in the late 1800s viewpoint that women were encouraged, if not required, to maintain the home solely themselves. In 1875, [[Harper's Bazaar]] published an article outlining the duties of a housewife and the esteemed respect those duties deserve: "but if one only staid to think how countless and how onerous those duties really are, more respect would be paid to the faithful effort to perform them, and an added reverence extended to the mother who is also the housekeeper."<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://hearth.library.cornell.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=hearth;idno=4732809_1428_052|title=Home Economics Archive: Research, Tradition, History|website=hearth.library.cornell.edu|access-date=2019-04-16}}</ref> Harper's Bazaar recognizes that women do the majority of the work within the home, pointing out that the work is detailed and at many times, difficult.

=== 20th century ===
The 20th century began with similar homemaking roles as the 19th; however, the century concluded with a much different perception. In the late 1990s, [[marriage]] consisted in most cases of both wife and husband participating in homemaking. Darlene Piña and Vern Bengtson who are [[anthropologist]]s and professors at the [[University of Southern California]], extensively researched marriage dynamics and household labor in the late twentieth century. They concluded that "all wives benefit equally by their husbands' greater involvement in household labor."<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Piña|first1=Darlene L.|last2=Bengtson|first2=Vern L.|date=1993|title=The Division of Household Labor and Wives' Happiness: Ideology, Employment, and Perceptions of Support|journal=Journal of Marriage and Family|volume=55|issue=4|pages=901–912|doi=10.2307/352771|issn=0022-2445|jstor=352771}}</ref> The division of labor within the home promotes a healthy relationship between husband and wife. Concluding, that likelihood of increased happiness within marriage is vastly improved when homemaking is shared with the husband. West and Zimmerman, concluded an analysis of over 487 couples and found that "women were rewarded for performing feminine behaviors, such as housework, whereas men receive positive reinforcement for engaging in masculine tasks, such as breadwinning."<ref name=":0">{{Cite journal|title=Mattering and wives' perceived fairness of the division of household labor|issue=6|pages=976–986|journal=Social Science Research|volume=39|doi=10.1016/j.ssresearch.2010.04.004|date=November 2010|last1=Kawamura|first1=Sayaka|last2=Brown|first2=Susan L.}}</ref>

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

Married women who are economically and emotionally dependent on their husbands are less likely to report the division of [[household]] labor as unfair. This significant group of married women felt that household labor reinforced their female gender identity and connection to femininity.{{citation needed|date=May 2019}}

=== 21st century ===
Sex and gender continue to shape the division of household responsibilities in the United States in the twenty-first century. According to the 2018 [[American Time Use Survey]], 84 percent of women and 69 percent of men reported that they spent some time performing household duties, which included "housework, cooking, lawn care, or household management." Women reported spending an average of 2.6 hours a day on household activities, and men 2.0 hours. On a surveyed day, 49% percent of women and 20% of men reported doing housework.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.nr0.htm|title=American Time Use Survey Summary|website=www.bls.gov|language=en|access-date=2019-07-12}}</ref>

[[File:Alebasi24 files nov trd 19.jpg|thumb]]
Men and women's perception of household responsibilities differ. [[Pew Research Center]]'s 2014 [[Religious Landscape Study]] found that fathers were more likely than mothers to say that chores were evenly split between both partners (56% vs. 46%). When asked, 50% of mothers reported they handled more responsibilities around the house than their partners; only 12% of fathers reported they did more household tasks. Despite this difference in perception, a majority of married U.S. adults (56%) said that sharing household chores as "very important" to a successful marriage.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/30/sharing-chores-a-key-to-good-marriage-say-majority-of-married-adults/|title=Sharing chores a key to good marriage, say majority of married adults|last=Geiger|first=A. W.|date=30 November 2016|website=Pew Research Center|access-date=12 July 2019}}</ref>

In a 2008 article, social scientists Susan L. Brown and Sayaka Kawamura reported that the unequal distribution in housework was attributed mainly to time availability. They concluded: "wives typically work fewer hours than their husbands, [so] they have more time available to perform household tasks."<ref name=":0" />