婦女的家事工作是性別分工與家庭角色規範運作之結果，也是家人關係中權力地位角力(bargaining)的象徵。傳統台灣家庭的父居結構下所形成婆媳家事工作的不平等分工與交換，在快速社會變遷下，到底經歷了何種變遷，又如何影響老年婦女的生活品質，是為本研究的研究目標。為了能夠深入瞭解台灣老年婦女世代所經歷的媳婦經驗與變遷後的婆婆生涯，本研究採焦點團體法(focus group) ，針對城、鄉地區之老老、中老世代婦女進行質性研究之探索。本研究從「自主──控制──支持──依賴」的理論概念出發，探討「燒飯」、「帶孩(孫)子」兩項重要家務的變遷對台灣老年婦女的生活經驗、意義銓釋、和其對生活品質的影響。資料的分析部份採「言辭分析」法(narrativeanalysis)。研究結果發現，婆媳的家務分工已呈現巨大的內涵及意義的變化，在家務分工與內涵上受到經濟自主或從子依賴、子媳的遷移、媳婦的勞動市場參與之影響最為明顯，然而對老年婦女的經驗意義詮釋和對其生活適應層面而言，則以其個人的資源以及其對父系家庭文化規範之認知鬆動狀況影響最大。根據此研究結果，本研究對老人及家庭政策、以及對未來的研究方向提出討論與建議。

Women's housework resposibility is the result of gender division of labor, in the family norm practices, and power bargaining of power in the family. In Taiwan's patriarchal and patrilocal system, the nature and change of housework-sharing and exchange patterns between in-laws became the focus of our research. We employed the focus group method to explore elderly women's housework experiences and their own interpretations. Two housework items-"cooking" and "grandsons-caring" are the locus of our investigation. Base on the "autonomy-control-support­dependency" conceptual framework, we analized the narrative among women's talk in four different focus groups. The results indicate that the housework content as well as the sharing patterns have undergone tremendous changes, and these changes are related to social class、living arrangement, migration and employed conditions of daughters-in-law. However, the meaning of such changes and elderly women's adaptation ability are more related to their own economics resources and their ability to rein­terpret traditional cultural norms. Policy implications of these results are also discussed.