ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to identify and explicate the personal, familial, and farm characteristics that are related to farm families' division of labor. Families were placed into categories based upon their off-farm employment status: no off-farm employment, spouse has off-farm employment, operator has off-farm employment, or both are employed in off-farm jobs. One-way Anovas comparing the employment groups by age, education, and number of children indicated significant differences between the groups for operators and spouses age, educational level, and the average number of children in the household. A slightly higher percentage of spouses who had off-farm employment stated the time they spent milking or caring for animals, running farm errands, doing the paperwork involved with farming, and taking care of a vegetable garden or animals for family consumption had decreased. Future research should explore the extent to which decisions made during the 1980s to take off-farm employment become a permanent part of family farming.
