ABSTRACT
DOMESTIC DIVISION OF LABOUR In this context it is important to determine which members of the household are responsible for day-to-day domestic servicing, for example child care, food provision and cooking, washing and ironing, cleaning of the house and maintenance of the garden (if applicable), and upon whom performance of particular tasks routinely depends. The person who is responsible for the completion of tasks bears a very different relationship to those tasks than does the person who ‘assists’. Whilst it is true that many of the male partners in the sample performed some domestic duties, they did so from the position of ‘assistant’. This confirms what Cynthia Cockburn refers to as the relatively autonomous relation-ship which most men have with the domestic environment in general and with domestic chores in particular (Cockburn 1985). Within the informal, unwritten constitution of domestic ‘units’ the responsibility is often unspoken and assumed. Domestic work is performed by the woman and goes largely unnoticed by her family. These responsibilities, pressures and demands, however, occupy her mind to a greater or lesser extent; whatever else she does in the day she must ensure that members of her family have food to eat, clean clothes to wear and that their house is not a health hazard. Within the ideology of ‘the family’, these duties and obligations are the woman’s by ‘natural’ right; she carries them out for love of her family, her reward being their comfort and happiness. This has implications for the quantity, quality and individual understanding of leisure time spent in the home by men and women.
