A
housewife is a woman whose main
occupation is running or managing her
family's
home—caring for and
educating her
children,
cooking and
storing food, buying
goods the family needs in day-to-day life,
cleaning and maintaining the home,
making clothes for the family, etc.—and who is generally not employed outside the home. Merriam Webster describes a housewife as a married woman who is in charge of her
household. The British
Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary (1901) defined a housewife as: "the mistress of a household; a female domestic manager; a pocket sewing kit".