Home management

After five long years, I managed to finish my masteral studies in Family Life and Child Development at UP Diliman. It took me three years to complete my thesis and I can’t really believe that it’s done. I’ve been having "post-thesis" blues, only to realize, there is no more work to be done. Since my research focused on home management, I’d like to share with you the study’s abstract to give you an idea of how some Filipino wives manage their homes and some recommendations that others can apply.

My thesis was an exploratory case study that was conducted to describe the management of time and communication of selected Filipino housewives living in Metro Manila, Philippines.

I used the Unified Mores Guidelines for the Socio Economic Classification of Households to determine the social class status of the 10 respondents. The respondents in my study were five wives belonging to the AB class and five wives from the C class residing in Metro Manila. I personally interviewed them using a questionnaire I designed. The questions were based on issues relevant to managing their homes. Only two out of the 10 wives are fully employed. The rest are full-time homemakers.

All home managers from both classes, with the exception of one, primarily look after the physical needs of their family. All homemakers employed paid househelpers. The two full-time working mothers from the AB class were structured with their use of time and manner of communicating tasks primarily to their helpers. The remaining eight full-time homemakers followed a loosely-structured time management system. They commonly addressed conflicts that arose from relationships with their family members, most especially their spouse. The two working mothers from the AB class said that their conflicts arose from the management of their maids.

My study revealed that there were several factors that affect how a wife manages her resources, such as time and communication at home. These factors included: the wife’s socio-economic status, her educational background and that of her husband’s, the wife’s occupation and that of her husband’s, the number and ages of her children, and the ages, number, years of service, and efficiency of her hired household helpers.

It is amazing to note that with such factors a wife has to juggle daily, she still manages to survive. It is evident that there is a current lack of local materials available on home management. The following are my recommendations to equip wives and families with the necessary tools for a better home management:

• More studies should be done on home management in the Philippines.

• Mothers should involve their children in age-appropriate household tasks, time management, simple financial management, and communication skills, which are all vital components of home management.

• Likewise, future home managers should not wait until they are married to be exposed to the mechanics of managing their home so that they could start off on the right foot. Many mistakes may be prevented if a wife enters marriage with a bit of knowledge about how to manage her home. Since home management is primarily designated to the wife, she must make sure she gets pointers from her mother and other successful home managers to give her an idea of what lies ahead in the future. She must read books that will help her understand what is involved in home management and attend seminars that are offered for that particular area.

• Since home management is a joint undertaking of the husband and wife, husbands can help ease the burden of their wives at home by taking part in tasks they are capable of doing like caring for the children, repairing broken appliances, etc. They should not be confined to simply providing for the financial resources of the family. Their involvement can relieve their wives of a lot of stress brought about by managing their home. A happier wife will make a happier husband.

• For future studies, a bigger sample coming from all levels of society must be studied thoroughly, from the start of their day until they retire in the evening. This may give a clearer picture of the actual mechanics of how a home is managed on a day-to-day basis depending on the family’s social status.

• Family-related courses must be made part of the general course requirements for tertiary education to better equip future home managers as it appears that many of them who enter marriage are ill-prepared to run their homes.

• Policy makers should provide better protection and privileges to paid domestic helpers because they are big assets in home management. They can help ease the work at home by assisting the home manager in all the areas where she needs support, be it with the children or housework. Paid domestic helpers also provide peace of mind and rest to the home manager because they allow more time for the home manager to do other things aside from her household tasks.

* * *

E-mail author at mommytalk@businessworks.com.ph.