Table of Contents
Definition of Household
(noun) One or more people who live together in a common space, share meals, and combine economic resources.
Examples of Household
- A nuclear family living in a house.
- Two university friends sharing an apartment.
Household Pronunciation
Syllabification: house·hold
Audio Pronunciation
Phonetic Spelling
- American English – /hOUs-hohld/
- British English – /hOUs-hohld/
International Phonetic Alphabet
- American English – /ˈhaʊsˌ(h)oʊld/
- British English – /ˈhaʊs(h)əʊld/
Usage Notes
- Plural: households
- It is important to remember that a household is not necessarily a family which is typically determined through kinship ties.
- Due to the continuum of household variations across societies and cultures the term household is framed by “eating from the same pot” or “living under one roof” but no single definition can encapsulate the term. For example, what constitutes a household in a hunting and gathering or nomadic society? Various institutions such as governments have distinct definitions for census and tax purposes often distinguishing between family and non-family households. Additionally, the term domestic group is sometime used as a replacement for household and even family because it is seen as less problematic.
- A household is a primary unit of social organization and a key to comparing and contrasting different societies and cultures.
- The four basic households are an individual living alone, a nuclear family, an extended family, or a group that does not share a kinship by blood (consanguinity) or marriage (affinity), but could have a fictive relationship.
- An apartment building is considered to have multiple households even through it is one residence, the relationship of the members in a dwelling determines a household, not the dwelling itself.
- Also called domestic group.
Related Quotations
- “Rearranging the home might be part of rethinking how heterosexual couples relate. And the three-piece suite is one example of how everyday objects might reinforce ideas about men as the head of the household. Besides the sofa there might be a large ‘dad’s chair’ given prime position in the living room and a smaller ‘mum’s chair’ in the corner, reflecting traditional ideas about the proper role of women as self-sacrificing and devoted to making men comfortable. These are rather flippant examples among what were serious attempts to think critically about relationships between women and men as relationships of power” (Worrel 2001:66–67).
- “The members of the conjugal family in our urban society normally share a common basis of economic support in the form of money income, but this income is not derived from the co-operative efforts of the family as a unit – its principal source lies in the remuneration of occupational role performed by individual members of the family. Status in an occupational role is generally, however, specifically segregated from kinship status – a person holds a ‘job‘ as an individual, not by virtue of his status in a family. Among the occupational statuses of members of a family, if there is more than one, much the most important is that of the husband and father, not only because it is usually the primary source of family income, but also because it is the most important single basis of the status of the family in the community at large. To be the main ‘breadwinner’ of his family is a primary role of the normal adult man in our society. The corollary of this role is his far smaller participation than that of his wife in the internal affairs of the household. Consequently, ‘housekeeping’ and the care of children is still the primary functional content of the adult feminine role in the middle-classes, in the great majority of cases not one which in status or remuneration competes closely with those held by men of her own class. Hence there is a typically asymmetrical relation of the marriage pair to the occupational structure. This asymmetrical relation apparently both has exceedingly important positive functional significance and is at the same time an important source of strain in relation to the patterning of sex roles” (Parsons 1943:32–33).
Additional Information
- Family and Kinship Resources – Books, Journals, and Helpful Links
- Word origin of “household” – Online Etymology Dictionary: etymonline.com
Related Terms
- domestic labor
- empty nest
- family
- head of household
- homework
- household allocative system
- household work strategy
- marriage
- sandwich generation
- second shift
References
Parsons, Talcott. 1943. “The Kinship System of the Contemporary United States.” American Anthropologist 45(1):22–38. doi:10.1525/aa.1943.45.1.02a00030.
Worell, Judith, ed. 2001. Encyclopedia of Women and Gender: Sex Similarities and Differences and the Impact of Society on Gender. San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
Works Consulted
Ferrante, Joan. 2011. Sociology: A Global Perspective. 7th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
Henslin, James M. 2012. Sociology: A Down-to-Earth Approach. 10th ed. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
Holmes, Mary. 2009. Gender and Everyday Life. London: Routledge.
Marsh, Ian, and Mike Keating, eds. 2006. Sociology: Making Sense of Society. 3rd ed. Harlow, England: Pearson Education.
Ritzer, George, ed. 2007. The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Ritzer, George, and J. Michael Ryan, eds. 2011. The Concise Encyclopedia of Sociology. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
Scott, Jacquelyn Thayer, Judith Treas, and Martin Richards, eds. 2007. The Blackwell Companion to the Sociology of Families. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Turner, Bryan S., ed. 2006. The Cambridge Dictionary of Sociology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Worell, Judith, ed. 2001. Encyclopedia of Women and Gender: Sex Similarities and Differences and the Impact of Society on Gender. San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
Cite the Definition of Household
ASA – American Sociological Association (5th edition)
Bell, Kenton, ed. 2014. “household.” In Open Education Sociology Dictionary. Retrieved April 27, 2024 (https://sociologydictionary.org/household/).
APA – American Psychological Association (6th edition)
household. (2014). In K. Bell (Ed.), Open education sociology dictionary. Retrieved from https://sociologydictionary.org/household/
Chicago/Turabian: Author-Date – Chicago Manual of Style (16th edition)
Bell, Kenton, ed. 2014. “household.” In Open Education Sociology Dictionary. Accessed April 27, 2024. https://sociologydictionary.org/household/.
MLA – Modern Language Association (7th edition)
“household.” Open Education Sociology Dictionary. Ed. Kenton Bell. 2014. Web. 27 Apr. 2024. <https://sociologydictionary.org/household/>.