Around the world, young people have different levels of household responsibilities. Some, often girls, look after siblings, cook, clean, fetch water and firewood, and do other household chores. Others do little household work, spending most of their time in school and extracurricular activities. 

How much responsibility for household care and domestic work do you have?

Figure 1. Some young people spend most or all of their day on household care and domestic work. Others spend most of their time on non-domestic activities.

(Credit: Tubarones Photography, cottonbro studio, Pexels licence)

As more people work outside the home and incomes rise, expectations for young people to do household chores are changing. Like adults, many young people now spend more time on non-household activities like school, sports, paid work, and leisure. Consequently, families rely more on markets for convenience foods, professional care services, and ready-made products. Many people, especially in high-income countries, no longer learn householding skills as they did in the past. This shift reduces household self-sufficiency and increases dependence on markets, discussed further in Section 2.2.1.

Reducing household care and domestic work frees time to do more activities outside the home, improving human development and social connections. However, over time people are losing valuable skills, including caring for others, growing and cooking food, repairing and maintaining our homes and possessions, managing money and managing energy and material resources. Reviving householding skills is crucial for strengthening social and ecological wellbeing and household resilience. We need these skills to build regenerative economies where everyone, regardless of age or gender, can meet human needs within planetary boundaries.

Many people do not view householding as skilled work. Nothing is further from the truth! Householding skills benefit those inside the household, but also support social and ecological wellbeing. These skills require time and practice over many years, so it's important for young people to start early.

Which of these skills are you developing?

Householding skills are core to our economies, helping us care for people and the planet. People of all ages and genders should develop these skills, making it easier to share householding responsibilities to build resilience and improve gender equality as we build a regenerative economy to meet human needs within planetary boundaries.

Concept: Regeneration

Skills: Reflection, Self-organisation

Time: varies depending on option

Type: Individual, pairs and/or group

Option 1: A household skill inventory

Time: 10-20 minutes, depending on whether students discuss their inventory results

As you have read in this section, householding involves many skills. It is important that you develop householding skills so you can become independent, caring for yourself and others. 

• Take this householding skills self-assessment to see which householding skills you have or may need to work on. When finished, discuss the list with another student or in a small group. What similarities and differences are there in your lists? What might account for those?

Option 2: Planning to develop householding skills

Time: 30 minutes

Based on your householding skills inventory, identify one or more skills that you would like to develop further.

• Do some basic research and brainstorming to figure out where and how you can learn the skill(s) you identified. 

  • Is this something that someone in your household can teach you?

  • Is it something you can teach yourself? 

  • Are there videos or courses online you can use? 

  • Are there teachers or other experts in your community who can help you?

• If you can, start making a plan to learn that skill. This can be a project and is listed in Subtopic 2.5 Taking Action.

Option 3 - Discussion: What does human care have to do with ecological care?

Time: 25 minutes

The text in this section claims that care work is essential for social and ecological wellbeing. While it is relatively clear that ecological care has positive impacts on humans, it is not necessarily the case that human care positively impacts ecosystems.

• How can human care both positively and negatively impact ecosystems?

• How can we change the way we care for humans to ensure that the rest of the living world is also cared for?

Ideas for longer activities and projects are listed in Subtopic 2.5 Taking Action

• How to Citizen - a podcast exploring the perspectives and practices people are using to wield collective power to build a better future. Difficulty level: easy

• Repair café - an organisation that offers a template for organising local repair cafés. Repair cafés both address civic engagement and housekeeping and repair. Difficulty level: easy

• Right to repair - an organisation campaigning for the right to repair our own appliances, the improvement of the ease to repair and the availability of spare parts. Difficulty level: easy

• Hungry Planet - a collection of photos by the Photographer Peter Menzel that show what people across the world eat in the stretch of a week. Difficulty level: easy

• Dollar Street - a website from the Gapminder organisation with photographs and videos of global households, mainly composed of kinship relationships. The website is fascinating to explore with or without a goal in mind, but you might want to consider how householding skills differ across the world by country and by income level. Difficulty level: easy

• 7 Days of Garbage - Interview with Gregg Segal, the artist who photographed families with seven days worth of their garbage to raise awareness about consumer culture and waste. Difficulty level: easy

• YouTube and TikTok can be great sources of information about householding skills. You can find videos about how to do just about anything related to householding - from cooking, to cleaning to repair. Difficulty level: varies

Link to Quizlet interactive flashcards and terminology games for Section 2.1.4 Householding skills 

household: a system where people living together care for each other and do domestic work, often termed the 'core economy'

market: a system where people buy and sell goods and services for a price.

self-sufficiency: a situation where an individual or a group can meet all their own needs themselves

householding: managing a household, including all both direct and indirect care skills

resilient: able to recover after a disturbance

regenerative economy: an economic system that meets human needs in a way that strengthens social and ecological systems

planetary boundaries: the limits of Earth systems to absorb the impact of human activity and continue to function

direct care: care that addresses an immediate need, often involves physical contact between caregiver and care-receiver

dwelling: a physical space where people live

sustainability: meeting people’s needs within the means of the planet

material footprint: the use of biomass, fossil fuels, metal ores, and non-metal ores, in tonnes per year

circular economy: an economic system where nature is regenerated and materials are kept in circulation through maintenance, reuse, recycling, composting, and other processes

mental load: the cognitive effort involved in managing work, household and all social relationships and responsibilities

ecosystem: the interaction of groups of organisms with each other and their physical environment

need satisfier: a specific way that people meet their needs

rewilding: protecting an environment and returning it to its natural state, passively by leaving it alone or actively by reintroducing native organisms that might have disappeared

supply chain: the sequence of processes involved in the production and distribution of a product

landfill: the place where waste is disposed of by burying it

pollution: the presence of a substance that has harmful effects on the environment

gender equality: when people of different genders are treated equally