I remember this about my mother's work and responsibilities:

My mother was a housewife. She would wash our clothes in a great big set tub made of slate, they were slanted, she would take a scrub board and scrub them in one and then rinse in the other one and she would put them in this basket she had and then take them to the window to hang them out. We couldn't afford a washing machine and when we did get one it was a wringer. You had to put that near the sink, you had to fill that by hand, then to empty it there was a pump. She also cooked. She gave us kids a bath in a big tub, she would heat the water on the old wood stove and give me and Bea a bath in it. Once she sent me to the barbershop, and the barber found some nits, he wouldn't cut my hair then. She combed my hair with a fine tooth comb and rubbed kerosene on it. Boy did that hurt. That was supposed to get rid of them. I used to take the curtains to have them cleaned and starched. My mother would hang them up, she always had to have curtains up in the windows no matter what else was in the house. Lots of times we had broken windows, we had to put cardboard in the windows. She would take care of washing the floors. She took a lot of people in that put out of their houses for a while, friends, relatives.