Home management practices of employed and nonemployed homemakers

Employed wives and mothers make up an important, and ever-growing segment of the population. In March, 1966, 35.4 percent of all United States wives were in the labor force (5:1). Of these women, the number of working mothers with children under eighteen years of age increased from 1.5 million in 1940 to 8.8 million in 1962. In 1962 about one third of all mothers with children under eighteen were working for wages outside the home (17:1). Furthermore, the Department of Labor estimates that in the future nine out of ten homemakers will be gainfully employed for a large part of their lives (18:5)? by the time a woman's youngest child is in school, she will still have forty years of life ahead of her (96:1). Thus home economics teachers, particularly at the high school and junior college level, need to know more about the management practices of employed homemakers, for the teaching curriculum can be added to or modified to include material especially useful to the future employed homemakers. Home advisors, as well as other teachers of adult classes, also need to know more of this subject to plan study programs suited to the particular needs of this group. The purposes of this study were (1) to investigate and compare background information and home management practices of employed and nonemployed home makers, (2) to compare the homemakers' employment or nonemployment status with their attitudes toward working wives and with the attitudes of their husbands as perceived by the homemakers, and (3) to determine some effects of the homemakers' employment on themselves and other family members.