&gt; Anyone who thinks being a homemaker is not a profession has no clue what it entails.<p>Or just has one of the many common definitions of profession, for which homemaker doesn&#x27;t qualify. E.g., the first definition in most dictionaries tends to be something like this &quot;a paid occupation, especially one that involves prolonged training and a formal qualification.&quot;<p>Homemaker is not, generally, a paid occupation, nor is it an occupation that requires prolonged training and a formal qualification.<p>I think the desire to characterize it as a &quot;profession&quot; is that the social perception of the social value of professions has led to a desire to characterize any vocation with perceived social value as a &quot;profession&quot;, and a perception that a judgement that something is not a profession implies that it is not a worthwhile vocation.<p>&gt; If it doesn&#x27;t include homemaker as an option then you&#x27;ve excluded all married single income households.<p>No, it doesn&#x27;t. Its possible to have a married single-income household where neither partner is a homemaker. (Single income households where homemaking tasks are either shared or contracted out, and the non-income-earning partner devotes their bulk of their time to tasks that are neither income-earning <i>nor</i> homemaking exist -- my perception is that they are <i>more</i> common among higher income groups, but that&#x27;s not the result of any systematic study.)