Activités ménagères, travail domestique, emplois familiaux

Statistics reflects how society considers itself: what do we call activity, work, employment? In the fifties, domestic work and living's earning activities were embedded in the scope of family enterprises; then statisticians progressively reduced the concept of "activity" to salary standards, what reached a climax in the economy in the seventies. At that time, the paradox was at its most: the so-called "inactive" women did work seventy hours a week to raise up their children. It has been at this time a crucial stake for the social debate to let recognize domestic work at its right value. Accounting domestic work in money terms changed the look upon those activities and highlighted them. In the eighties, domestic work became a scientific topic: considered as such, the notion was deconstructed and denoted for the future a deposit of employment, integrated in a governmental plan for developing personal services. In twenty years, we have successively used the terms of domestic activities, home work, and family employment: aren't these three items avatars of a unique reality?