Does AI mean fewer domestic chores for us all?

How this can only be achieved by looking at the wider social, cultural and political choices we make

Despite the range of TV programmes and media articles that extol the virtues of housework and domestic bliss, those actually doing the domestic labour typically want to see the back of it. Many people anecdotally say that much ‘reproductive labour’ (the term used to describe care giving and domestic housework roles) would ideally be automated away, leaving them to perform more human centred aspects of their jobs such as playing with children or focusing on pleasurable meal times. Indeed, recipients of care are often supportive of the idea of more technology in this process with pensioners significantly more willing to use of robots in elder care than other groups.

The news then, that AI could reduce nearly 40% of the time spent on domestic chores within a decade will therefore be considered as good news by many.  Are we all headed for a new era where the home can be a place of genuine rest and recouperation, particularly for women who do a highly disproportionate amount of reproductive labour?

It might seem that these possibilities are within reach unless we look at the history of technology in the home and how, as Helen Hester and Nick Srnicek set out in their excellent book After Work: A History of the Home and the Fight for Free Time, all sorts of labour saving technology appears to have made little or no difference to the time spent on reproductive labour. Drawing extensively on their book, we will set out a brief history of technology in the home and how our social response to this is equally, if not more important, in the impact on our lives.

This is an important case study that can help us to understand the potential impact of AI on our lives, not only in the home but at work and society generally. The way we live our lives is not simply shaped by technology, and its apparent promises, but our human response to it is as much, if not more important.

A brief history of technology in the home

Prior to the twentieth century, housework was extremely draining – lighting was through kerosene lamps and fires that involve massive amount of work chopping wood, bringing in coal, looking after lamps and so on. For heating, water was hand pumped, carried in for cooking, cleaning and bathing (a job which continues to take up huge amounts of time in many parts of the world). On the other side, all the waste of laundry suds, chamber pots, ashes from the fire and so on all had to be taken out of the house. In fact, in the 1890s, the average house carried around the home 7 tons of coal and 9,000 gallons of water per year.

In the opening decades of the twentieth century there was an “industrial revolution” of the home, much of which was infrastructural: this period saw the introduction of running water, electricity and gas. Cities saw the building of municipal systems that could not only supply water but take away sewage and wastewater.

These innovations led to very tangible savings in time – it is estimated that adoption of running water saved households around one and a half to two hours a day of work spent pumping, carrying and heating water. Gas infrastructure saved 30 mins a day previously spent cleaning up and removing coal dust. (see Hester and Srnicek’s book for sources of these stats).

This infrastructure created the foundation for other domestic technology to emerge. For example, cooking over open fires or stoves was replaced by gas, oil and electric ovens in the 1920’s which created significant labour-saving gains as there was a major reduction in time spent cooking and cleaning. The introduction of freezers meant economies of scale were possible in food production so it was not necessary to cook a meal from scratch each day, but instead meals could be prepared efficiently in batches ahead of time.

There was also a shift away from household production of food in favour of market purchased goods – e.g., flour mills to refine flour rather than doing this by hand at home, access to pre-prepared tinned goods and convenience foods (e.g., cereal). Time spent sourcing food was also made easier through the increasing spread of chain stores. As Hester and Srnicek point out:

“The unwaged work of producing food – and of preparing for storage – was transferred from the home to the market”.

The Cowan Paradox

It took some time for these innovations to become standardised through Western households, but the decades of the 1940s and 50’s saw a massive introduction of these domestic technologies. Surely then, we would see a commensurate drop in the amount of time spent on reproductive labour.

It seems not, with the finding that fulltime housewives (yes this was a recognised category) spent 52 hours a week on housework in 1924 and 55 hours a week in 1960s.  Ruth Schwartz Cowan identified the paradox that despite all new labour-saving devices, the time involved in reproductive labour did not appear to have been saved in the home. She suggested that time spent on domestic work did not decrease between 1870s and 1970s.

Unpicking this is a salutary lesson in the way that our behaviours are only in part a function of our individual choices. They also reflect wider social, cultural, and political pressures and these can be hard to resist.

On this point, Hester and Srnicek suggest that part of the failure to recognise the benefits of new technologies in more free time is due to the way these changes meant that housework was increasingly individualised and concentrated into the role of the housewife. So whilst previously work would be shared by unwaged workers such children, relatives, neighbours, and the domestic servant industry this changed. Children were increasingly in education, men were positioned as ‘bread winners’ and therefore not responsible for reproductive labour, and well-off families who had relied on domestic servants were unable to maintain them as alternative jobs and opportunities for poor women emerged.

These changing social relations encouraged adoption of domestic technology – this in turn created individuation of work as activities that were once undertaken as part of collective effort could now be undertaken by a single person. Perversely this created more rather than less work, particularly for women.

Laundry is a good example: washing machines were imagined as a replacement for the work of individual servants; prior to this it would be done by laundresses or commercial laundries. It could have been the case that commercial laundries were improved and the work of washing clothes further collectivised, but this never became a reality. And, of course, this was in no small part due to white goods manufacturers calculating there was more profit potential from mass market production than for collective use.

Another reason is that while tech may have meant reduction of some tasks, it also meant the creation of new ones – so for example, whilst laundry appeared to be easier, people bought more clothes, increasing amount of work to be done. Running water meant more work as there were now bathrooms that required cleaning, availability of water also meant expansion of lawns that entailed the upkeep of outside spaces.

But also as domestic tech introduced, standards were ratcheted up. The more cleaning that enters the home, the cleaner the home is expected to be. As Hester and Srnicek put it,

“While capacities for extending free time may have grown, social norms standards and expectations have evolved in such a way that these advances are minimised”

A good example of this is the ‘“performative cleaning” that is easy to find on social media sites sites advice such as every week you need to do a “Sunday reset” in which every inch of your home is scrubbed to ‘squeaky perfection’ as this Vox article points out.

Reference points

This is a classic case of the way we humans tend not to look at what we do in terms of absolutes but rather we operate through comparisons being made between what is expected, a ‘reference point,’ and what is experienced. When an experience deviates from these expectations, it calls our attention – for good or bad. So as new technology moves into the home, then what is expected subtly and at times imperceptibly changes.

Using a series of experiments, Ed O’Brien developed the principle of ‘The Next Effect’ in which he showed the way in which the same stimulus is less enjoyable merely when participants believe a better future version is in the works. This occurs because knowledge of better future is, in effect, self-fulfilling: it spurs people to discover more problems in the present that must have needed fixing.

So while we may have not noticed the inevitable dirt that comes with cooking over open fires, the introduction of cookers meant that a cleaner version of the house was possible – we were no longer content with our homes as they once were.

Foodie culture

A nice example of this is concerning the way we prepare food. Prior to the 1900’s the work of food consumption was primarily oriented around production not preparation – growing, tending harvesting took priority over creation of elaborate meals,

But as the twentieth century dawned, the emerging disciplines of domestic science and home economics encouraged housewives to elevate standards including those around cooking and meal taking. There was a new emphasis on productivity and systematicity within the single-family house. This was not simply an attempt to save housewives time and effort but also an effort to raise standards in nutrition and food hygiene at a time when discoveries were being made about the role of vitamins and minerals in individual health.

But at same time, the possibility of more free time was seen as existential quandary for housewives who were seen as searching for challenge, individual meaning and a sense of purpose. This was tangled up with ‘good taste’ and ‘appropriate conduct’ such as the correct way to lay a table which of course failed to take into account different approaches to the act of eating or uneven access to resources.

The austerity and horrors of WWII led to newfound appreciation for elaborate meals – was not only seen as primary role for married women but a key way for them to express themselves as individuals. Alongside this new technology such as convenience and pre-packaged food was becoming available – surely a way to alleviate the work of cooking.

But rather than saving time, these were predominantly marketed as a way to facilitate the creation of more varied and sophisticated meals- allowing women to be better mothers and wives rather than the promise of reducing work. They were a ‘foundation’ on which to build and not a replacement.

It is not entirely a one-way story of the time-saving opportunity of technology being replaced by increasing expectations and ‘standards’: for example, there has been a decline in time taken prepping food e.g., British households of the 1950s would have cooked breakfast whilst today we rely on cereal. And lunches might have been stews or roasts whilst today there is typically a sandwich.

But at the same time there has been a resurgence in elaborate home cooking – often associated with worries about industrial food production, obesity and general health / environ concerns, this relatively new ‘foodie’ culture has begun to create very hard to reach cultural standards of being a foodie. With this there is a huge range of time-consuming activities such as finding shopping ingredients, locating deals to fit a household budget, testing out with the family and the labour of cooking from scratch.

Alternative to foodie culture

The home is the location of routines that are very familiar to us – and we see the same or very similar behaviours in the homes around us, setting strong social norms. meaning it can be hard to see that there are alternatives.

But there are many experiments in collective living that have revolved around a shared kitchen, not least as cooking is an activity that can significantly benefit from high specification equipment and economies of scale (relative to some other household tasks). And there are examples of this operating successfully include the subsidised canteens of IKEA (for consumers) and John Lewis (for employees). Today, an interesting development is food sharing apps such as Olio, which offers the means by which households can share food with others less well off.

And the WWII period was one where many of society worst off ate their best as communal feeding centres were set up, designed to provide nutritious and healthy foods. At their peak these were producing 4m meals every week.

These all offer examples of ways in which perhaps we can organise ourselves different to take advantage of technology to reduce the time spent on reproductive labour, rather than simply adjusting our standards to quickly eat up any time efficiency.

Foodie culture and hedonic adaption

Given the seemingly endless ratcheting up of the standards of reproductive labour (such as foodie culture), it helps to better understand patterns of hedonic adaption (HA), by which we mean the way we get used the emotions associated with enhanced happiness or sadness.

As Ken Sheldon and Sonja Lyubomirsky point out, on the one hand, large longitudinal studies have shown that well-being decreases substantially after adverse life events such as unemployment, disability, divorce, and widowhood, and often does not completely recover. This research suggests that strong negative events can throw people permanently “off kilter”. On the other hand, there is plenty of research that shows boosts to happiness are not always maintained; in fact the (albeit scant) literature suggests that there is typically complete adaptation to positive changes. For example Philip Brickman reported that lottery winners were no happier up to 18 months after the news than those who had experienced no windfall.

The answer it seems, is to work on appreciating what we have, and to create varied experiences out of it, extracting the most from our current choices rather than engaging in a restless search for an idealized perfect future. Otherwise, research suggests that the HA mechanism means we are tempted to go down the route of overconsumption and overspending as (in the case of foodie culture) as the appeal of familiar ingredients, recipes, means of preparation, kitchen gadgets and so on that initially brought pleasure begins to fade. If we are to avoid ever more time spent on this aspect of reproductive labour, then it seems we need to try to avoid the desire to regain the initial excitement that is now missing.

In conclusion

We are in the midst of an ideological shift where we are starting to see more clearly that human behaviour is not simply located within the individual but are the result of the internalisation of wider social and cultural mandates. And it is clear this is woven into the way our behavioural mechanisms operate: we are susceptible to new possibilities, and a desire to constantly experience the excitement of this means we can fail to appreciate the value of simply having more free time.

One person that directly challenges this is Tricia Hersey. The author of "The Nap Ministry, Rest Is Resistance," Hersey is the founder of The Nap Ministry, an organization that focuses on the liberating power of naps. The ministry is built on the idea that rest is a form of resistance and reparations; her book combines spirituality, Black liberation, and activism, championing rest as essential for well-being and resistance against oppressive work culture, particularly for marginalized communities, with practical advice and storytelling rooted in womanism and Afrofuturism.

Another example that can change the way we orient ourselves to reproductive labour is through the built environment and how the structure of the housing directly influences the behaviours that people who live in them face. Hester and Srnicek point to ‘Red Vienna’ a term for the rebuilding of the Austrian capital that took place after WWI. Here the municipality took a more active role in the housing crisis, prioritising working class needs and fostering more communal ways of living with apartment complexes including gyms nurseries, libraries, lecture halls, laundries, workshops and garages. This was funded by progressive taxation targeting luxury goods such as on cars and champagne.

The design choices were related to ideas regarding the need to reduce the drudgery of domestic chores, giving working class women more time for political organising and civic engagement. Whilst this movement was quashed in the 1930s by the rise of fascism, the influence can still be felt today with large swathes of housing being affordable and high-quality social housing which continues to be built. Envious glances are now being cast in the direction of how this has led to Vienna to be called “the world’s most liveable city.”

It seems to us that when we look at something as apparently simple as the amount of time we spend of reproductive labour, then we can quickly see the way that behavioural mechanisms (namely reference points and HA) are helpful to unpack what is shaping these outcomes.

And of course, this is also an object lesson in the way that these mechanisms, and our choices are not always in the gift of individuals alone but we need to see the way these interact with the wider social, cultural and market dynamics. So anyone wanting to understand the impact of technology in our lives needs to examine wider social-technology-systems and, with this, we need to consider the wider political agendas about how we want to live and what we should prioritise.

As the AI agenda increasingly ramps up, these debates are surely more important than ever.