Measuring Household and Market Labors

Abstract

The data that describe the allocation of household tasks and time are drawn from a larger research effort launched in 1976. For that study, the data allowed for an analysis of the apportionment of household and market labors, the content and organization of the household day (Berk and Berk, 1979), and the reactions of women to the “job” of household work (e.g., Berheide et al., 1976; Cannon, 1978; Berk, 1983). Because it was a first attempt to comprehensively portray the domestic work life of women and their families, only intact American households were included in the original sample. Moreover, given that the literature to date had devoted only scant attention to the organization of domestic work, and to avoid the complications posed by agricultural labor (see Hacker, 1977), only urban areas with populations greater than 50,000 were sampled.