Homemaking is mainly an American and Canadian term for the management of a home, otherwise known as housework, housekeeping, housewifery or household management. It is the act of overseeing the organizational, day-to-day operations of a house or estate, and the managing of other domestic concerns. A person in charge of the homemaking, who is not employed outside the home, in the US and Canada, is called a homemaker, a term for a housewife or a househusband. Historically the role of homemaker was often assumed by women. The term "homemaker", however, may also refer to a social worker who manages a household during the incapacity of the housewife or househusband. Home health workers assume the role of homemakers when caring for elderly individuals. This includes preparing meals, giving baths, and any duties the person in need cannot perform for themselves.
Good Housekeeping is one of several magazines related to homemaking.
Title page of Our Home Cyclopedia: Cookery and Housekeeping, published in Detroit, Michigan, in 1889
A vacuum cleaner
A 1950s washing machine from Constructa
A housewife is a woman whose role is running or managing her family's home—housekeeping, which may include caring for her children; cleaning and maintaining the home; making, buying and/or mending clothes for the family; buying, cooking, and storing food for the family; buying goods that the family needs for everyday life; partially or solely managing the family budget—and who is not employed outside the home. The male equivalent is the househusband.
Young Housewife, oil painting on canvas by Alexey Tyranov, currently housed at the Russian Museum in St Petersburg, Russia (1840s)
Southern Paiutes at Moapa, Nevada, wearing traditional Paiute basket hats, while the baby is swaddled in traditional rabbit robes in a Paiute cradleboard.
A housewife in Yendi, Kumasi, Ghana, pours water into a meal as her children play, 1957
A housewife by a Wascator laundry machine