All tasks within the home are essential, and this goes beyond the usual tasks of cooking and cleaning, extending itself to the act of caregiving. Regardless of who is providing the services in the home (be it a paid worker of family member) these tasks are essential for the maintenance of a home environment which allows for each of its members to flourish. This paper takes an ecological and interdisciplinary approach to the study of the specific aspects of the work completed within the home.

Organizations, occupations and professions usually devote considerable effort to training and other forms of purposive hands-on processes, so that their members learn the practices that belong to their job. However, this investment does not always pay off, or, at least, in a way proportional to the effort.

Eco-sustainability and environment protection are key issues for businesses in response, among others, to the pressure of consumers and other stakeholders - e.g. public agencies (Porter & van der Linde, 1995). The weak response to these pressures was previously motivated by the high investments required to match tougher environmental standards.

The quality of teaching and learning in many universities has become an issue of growing concern and scrutiny in many countries around the world. One of the biggest problems is the difficulty of defining quality and share this definition amongst all the actors involved in the process: students, faculty, labour market and graduates.

For several years, governments and the media are making us aware of the global problem of energy supply and other supplies, because they affect the sustainability of the planet. However, in recent years, electricity consumption continues to increase significantly due, on the one hand, to the increase in electrical appliances in all homes and, on the other hand, to the lack of responsible consumption.

Much is said about sustainable architecture or ecological houses, but indeed - as this congress rightly says - in the end it is the life in that house that must be sustainable. In this case it is essential, therefore, to consider what is usually called human ecology, too. Inhabitants, physically and emotionally, as well as spiritually, must maintain a healthy and long-lasting equilibrium, optimising their own resources. They must not permanently consume them, but rather permit their spontaneous recovery and renewal.

This is an exploratory pilot study narrating the perception of mothers towards the career choices of their children, focusing on hospitality generally and more specifically their perception of a possible career of the home. Research or the lack of it, seems to indicate that the work of the home is not perceived as a profession therefore hospitality has been used as a bridge in this exploratory study to examine perceptions of a profession related to the home.

According to Poelmans (2001) the origin of the work/family research domain can be situated in the late nineteen seventies, with seminal works of Renshaw (1976), Kanter (1977) and Pleck (1977). Furthermore, Kanter (1977) observes that early in the twentieth century, corporations tended to take over the functions of the family by turning workplaces into independent institutions.

In the famous conference held in 1951, at the convention of architecture at Darmstadt, entitled "Building, dwelling, thinking", Heidegger observed how the housing crisis was the "crisis" par excellence, a sign of eradication and disorientation of contemporary man. Dwelling, according to the German philosopher, is the typical human way of being in the world.

In the contemporary discourse and extensive research on sustainable living and housing, little is made to investigate the phenomena of the home and the way it works. Despite the centrality of the home to aspects of sustainable living, massive research is being made to enhance the physical environment of houses to attend to the requirements of sustainability. This is, apparently, due to the fact that contemporary societies are overwhelmingly dominated by political institutions that organize behavioural moods and responses, which hinder any intelligible understanding of complex phenomena such as the home.