WOMEN on Farms Average 63 Hours’ Work Weekly in Survey of 700 Homes

There is much talk nowadays about the housewife with too much leisure. But as far as the farm woman is concerned, this is not yet a very troublesome problem. Of her the old saying still has significance:  "Man works from sun to sun, but woman’s work is never done.”

Just how many hours may be considered a reasonable working week for the home maker? On this opinions differ. But few will deny that more than 60 hours a week means overwork. Yet by this easy test over half of the 700 farm women included in a recent study work too long. In industry the 8-hour day has been set as standard, with one day off in seven, and for many workers an additional half day on Saturday. Judged by this standard almost all of these farm women will be classed as overworked. But a 44-hour week is probably unduly short for the occupation of home making, where no time must be spent in going to and from work and where the strain and noise of modern industry is absent. Possibly a 50-hour week is a fair compromise—8 hours a day for six days with 2 hours on Sunday.  Yet five-sixths of farm home makers are found to exceed even this liberal figure. No matter what standard we adopt, overwork appears to be the usual thing.

There is no reason to think that these 700 women were exceptionally industrious. If the facts were obtained for all of the 6,000,000 farm homes of the country the average would probably be even higher.  For the women included in the study represent, on the whole, a superior group, with enough time, interest, and ability to keep careful records of how they spent their time for the seven days of a typical week. One hundred and twenty-nine of them live in the Middle West, 139 in New York, and the remaining 432 in three far Western States.  On an average their records show 63 hours and 30 minutes of working time for the week.

Not all of this time, of course, was spent in housekeeping and care of children. For the woman on the farm carries a double job; she is farmer as well as home maker. And in a few instances she adds a third paid job to the traditional two.  It is this double or triple role which accounts for most of the overwork. For home making alone is still a full-time job for most farm women. According to these 700 records, it required an average of 52 hours and 17 minutes a week, and dairy work, care of poultry, gardening, and other jobs took an additional 11 hours and 13 minutes.

The term home making covers a multitude of tasks. How was this 52 hours a week distributed? Almost half of it was spent in feeding the family, and most of this in the preparation of meals and dish washing.  The figures for the New York home makers may be taken as characteristic of the average situation. Of the 52 hours and 59 minutes which they spent during a week in home making, a total of 25 hours and 51 minutes was given to food—16 hours and 14 minutes to preparing meals, 8 hours and 30 minutes to clearing away meals, 53 minutes to food preservation, and 14 minutes to other food work.

Cleaning and straightening the house was the next highest item, requiring 8 hours and 15 minutes a week. The other items in the care of the house—care of fires, lights, water supply, repairing of furnishings, care of house surroundings—added another 2 hours and 17 minutes. Five hours and 21 minutes went to laundering, 4 hours and 11 minutes to sewing, 1 hour and 45 minutes to mending, and 13 minutes to other care of clothing.

Adding all of these items together, they give a total of 47 hours and 53 minutes devoted to housekeeping—to food, house, and clothing.  Of the remaining 5 hours and 6 minutes which these New York farm women spent in home making, 2 hours and 26 minutes were given to care of children and other members of the family, 1 hour and 47 minutes to purchasing, planning, and other management, and 53 minutes to miscellaneous items.

Clearly this is a very different picture indeed from the one which is usually painted concerning the modern home maker. According to the current version, we should expect to find her housekeeping tasks reduced to a mere hour or so a day, with the care of children and the management of the family income absorbing the major part of her limited working time. For the city home maker this may be somewhat true. But for the farm woman it bears little resemblance to the actual situation.

Are we, then, to conclude that the farm home has not been touched by the industrial revolution? That ready-made clothing, ready-cooked foods, and better equipment and household conveniences have not cut down the time required in our grandmother’s day for housekeeping? Such a conclusion would, of course, be unjustified. For though the working hours of the farm woman are still long, they were undoubtedly even longer 50 years ago. And much more help was given the home maker then than now by other members of the household. One-fifth of these New York housewives did all of their work themselves, and on the average they received only one hour a day of help.

Averages, however, tell only part of the story. In some of these homes the time spent in home making by home maker and help together fell much above or below the average of 60 hours. What caused these variations?

The most important factor, of course, was difference in the size of the family. In the households with only two persons the routine tasks of preparing and clearing away meals, cleaning, laundering, and mending usually took less than 40 hours a week; whereas in the households with seven and more persons almost 60 hours was required.  The size of the house and the conveniences and equipment also had their effect, and sometimes more time was spent just because there were plenty of people to do the work.

The influence of all these factors is clearly shown by the two New York households spending the lowest and highest time in home-making work. In the first of these the home maker had only herself and her husband to care for, with a 5-room house, running water in the kitchen, modern plumbing, electric lights, and a washing machine. Only 31 hours and 30 minutes were spent in home making during the week, and the home maker did all of the work except for the few minutes that her husband gave to looking after the fire.

In the other home there were four children, and the 9-room house could boast no modern improvements—no running water nor pump, no sink nor drain, and no electricity for light or power. But these factors in themselves were not enough to account for the enormous total of 117 hours spent in home-making work. The chief explanation lies in the fact that there were three daughters at home, all of them old enough and not too busy to share in the housework. Together they spent more time in home-making tasks than the home maker herself—57 hours compared with her 45. And even the husband and son contributed 15 hours. Clearly, when there are many hands to make the work light, there is little incentive to keep it down to a minimum.