WORLD FAMILY POLICY FORUM 199916Iwill focus on family work, by which I mean the ordinary,everyday tasks required to nurture a family: cooking,cleaning, planting, harvesting, repairing, tending, consoling,encouraging—the list goes on. My examples are drawn pri-marily from my own culture and from my experience inSouthwest Indian culture, including interviews with Apacheand Navajo grandmothers and grandchildren. Yet I believethat the principles these examples illustrate are applicable inother cultures.I grew up in a little town in northern Utah, the oldestdaughter in a family of thirteen children. We lived on a smalltwo-and-one-half acre farm with a large garden, fruit trees,and a milk cow. We children loved helping our dad plant thegarden, following behind him like little quail as he dug theholes, and we tossed in the seed potatoes, or as he cut the fur-row with his hoe and we dropped in the seeds. Weeding wasless exciting, but it had to be done. I was never very good atmilking the cow. Fortunately, my brothers shared that task. Iloved working with my mother: fixing meals, learning tosew, and caring for my younger brothers and sisters.My mother did not leave home to earn money. She spenther day caring for the children and our home, and helpingneighbors when needed. My father was a professor; hetaught automotive technology at the university, and he oftentook us with him to the auto shop to play around while heworked. Well, I played around, but my brothers watcheddad's every move, and learned to fix cars as they workedalong with him.Caring for our large family kept all of us busy. Motherwas the overseer of the inside work, and dad the outside,but I also remember seeing my father sweep floors, washdishes, and cook meals when his help was needed. Mymother taught each of us—the boys and the girls—to cook,clean, and sew. Some mothers were afraid their childrenmight ruin the sewing machine. Not my mother. It wasmore important to her that we learn to do things for our-selves and for each other.When my older brother, Reed, was still young, perhapsnine or ten years old, he was sitting at the sewing machine oneday mending his trousers when a neighbor stopped by to visit.She apparently felt sorry for him and said, “Let me do that foryou.” My brother said, “No thanks, I want to do it myself.” Itwas a point of pride for him that he knew how to sew.Years later, when Reed was a father with children in highschool, one daughter needed a special dress for a schoolactivity. My brother is a talented engineer; in fact, he devel-oped technology that transmits color photographs by satel-lite. He is also a father, who, while growing up, learned tomake sacrifices for others. So when he came home in theevening he helped a daughter make her dress. Again, it wasa point of pride, and also a matter of building good relation-ships with his daughter.As children we often worked together, but not all at thesame task. While we worked, we talked, sang, quarreled,made good memories, and learned what it meant to be fam-ily members—good sons, daughters, fathers or mothers,good Americans, and good Christians.As a child, I didn't know there was anything unusualabout this life. My father and mother read us stories abouttheir parents and grandparents, and it was clear that both ofmy parents had worked hard as children. Working hard waswhat families did, what they had always done, to enable themto not only survive but to thrive. It was through work that weshowed our love and respect for each other—and work wasalso the way we learned to love and respect each other.When I went to Michigan State University to do graduatework, I learned that not everyone considered this pattern oflife ideal. At the university, almost everything I read, andmuch of what I heard, belittled family work. In class lectures,in professional journals, and in the talk of liberated graduatestudents, I was told that family work, including nursingbabies, cooking, and cleaning—all the ordinary everydaywork of caring for a family—was a waste of an intelligentwoman's time. A woman might choose to be a mother and carefor her family as a sideline, but the message was clear—thework that really mattered was paid work done away fromhome. Historians reminded us that men had long been liber-ated from farm and family work; now, women were also to beliberated. One professor taught that assigning the tasks of nur-turing children primarily to women was the root of women'soppression. Articles in the professional journals argued thatwomen who nurtured their own children and received no paywere really no different from servants or slaves—they wereslaves to their husbands and to their children. I was told thatwomen must be liberated from these onerous family tasks sothat they might be free to work for money.This negative assessment of the everyday work of nurtur-ing life in families—of devoted mothering and fathering—still prevails in much of American academia. Yet it does notsquare with my own experience, nor is it supported by theWork in the Home: Building Enduring RelationshipsKathleen Slaugh Bahr, associate professor of marriage, family, and human development, Brigham Young UniversityWORLD FAMILY POLICY FORUM 199917research I have done since that time. Also, in my judgment,this negative view, while politically correct in today's socie-ty—who has not heard the woman's complaint that she willgo crazy or become stupid if she has to stay at home with herchildren—does not fit with the findings of many other schol-ars and practitioners who have honestly researched theimpact of family work on family life. I would like to reviewfindings from my research that underscore the importance offamily work by all family members.I wish to emphasize three points: First, the primary worthof family work lies in its moral and relational value. Familywork naturally and effectively promotes what many of ushere seek: respect for elders, love for children, equalitybetween husband and wife, and mutual assistance and unityamong neighbors. Second, you cannot increase the status of,or people's interest in, family work by measuring its eco-nomic worth. And third, when family