ABSTRACT
The home is both a physical space where certain activities are performed and a value-laden symbol. Physically and symbolically the home is a private place, away from the public world of work. The largest sex differences in the importance of different aspects of the meaning of home occurred between men who were away from home at work and did not share housework and women who were primarily homemakers. In the within-sex comparisons, only one difference occurred: women who were mainly homemakers assigned more identity-related meaning to the home than women in sharing couples. The Hayward study found differences in the meaning of the home as a function of sex role, even though the explicit purpose of the study was not the study of sex roles. Fifteen urban and fifteen suburban couples participated in an open-ended, in-depth interview in which each partner was interviewed separately by a same-sex interviewer.
