A lot of our work-mates live in shared housing, ‘patch-work families’ and other domestic set-ups. This questionaire is meant as a guideline for conversations about proletarian domestic work and wider living conditions. It is a draft version, please send comments to: angryworkersworld@gmail.com
Questionaire: Domestic Work
*** The Friend – Background
Age, Gender, Wage work, Children?
*** The Household
Do you share a room, a flat?
How many people do you live with?
How did you come together?
How did you find the flat?
How long have you been living in this arrangement?
Do you feel like your home is ‘your home’, or is it more ‘the place where i live’? Can you invite friends around?
Do you live as a ‘family’ and what does that mean? What role does family or blood-relations play in your life?
*** The Rent / Finance
How much do you earn (wage, benefits) and how much do you spend on rent? on food? on other essentials? On debt repayment?
How do you share out finances in the household, e.g. rent payment, money for food? Things any dependents need e.g. clothes, school trip money?
Did you ever have difficulties paying your rent or mortgage? What happened? How did you solve the problem?
Are their health and safety problems in the house (dampness etc.)? Does the landlord do something about it?
*** The Domestic Work
How many minutes or hours do you spend on domestic work a day on average?
What do you have to do and how long does it take?
What appliances do you use?
Do you cook from scratch, do you eat out, do you buy ready meals (how often per week)?
Do you use paid services outside the home to do reproductive work for you, e.g. hair-dressers, laundrettes etc.? what exactly? why? why not?
Do you pay someone to do domestic work for you inside your home, e.g. cleaning, repairing things? What exactly? why? why not?
which tasks do you like, which don’t? why?
In what way is domestic work different from your wage work (apart from the fact that it is unpaid)?
Do you have other domestic work to do, e.g. care for elderly relatives?
If you don’t work at home, what are the main activities you do at home?
*** The Division of Labour
How do you share out work within the household?
Does everyone do the same hours of work? If not, why?
Does everyone do the same tasks? If not, why?
Beyond the daily tasks, does everyone care about the house in a similar way? Who has administrative tasks, e.g. sort out electricity bills or communicate with the landlord?
Are you happy with the way the work is distributed?
Does gender play a role? how?
*** The conflicts
Do you have arguments within the household? what about?
How do you deal with conflicts? does everyone deal with conflicts in a similar way?
Do you feel you have enough space in case of tensions?
Does gender play a role? how?
*** The authorities
Who apart from you and your flat-mates has a say in your household? Who enters the home?
Does the landlord visit? Do they interfere?
Do local authorities visit? Do they interfere?
*** The children
What does child-care involve in your case?
Do you have a partner who is engaged in childcare? are there other people?
How is childcare distributed amongst the primary carers? time-wise? in terms of tasks?
Do you have professional child-care? How many hours? Inside the home or outside? How much do you spend on childcare?
What are your main problems or worries when it comes to childcare?
*** Beyond the household
How do you get on with your neighbours? What do you do or share with each other?
How often do you have friends or guests at your place?
Apart from work etc. how much time do you spend in other social spaces and where, e.g. libraries, community centres, pubs etc.? why?
How many good friends do you have? How often do you see them?
Do you compare your home life with others? Is there an ‘ideal’?
*** Conclusions
How happy or unhappy are you with your home life? What about?
What would you like to change?
What makes it difficult to change things?
Is your home-life different from when you were a kid? In what way?
