The Time Devoted to Domestic Work and Care

The aim of this article is to analyze the domestic environment from a sociology of time perspective. A qualitative investigation made by the author in the Comunidad Autónoma de Euskadi is thus taken as starting point. The text proposes to conceptualize the time used in domestic labor and care as donated time: time that is neither given nor offered as a present and that operates in a different (not opposed) manner to quantification and market terms. Such a “don” operates by taking as its basis a reasoning that establishes guidelines that remain tacit and entail a relationship of reciprocity; the obligation to give, receive and give back. An approach of domesticity from the time donated perspective allows to spread the analysis further than the material aspects, in order to deepen the study into the moral and the relational dimensions (moralization of time and reciprocity, respectively) using a multidimensional conception of time.