This paper aims to place household production in cross‐cultural and cross‐national perspective. It begins with brief comments on the meaning of household production and some assumptions about it. Then, in Part I of the paper, four important aspects of socio‐cultural context or environment are described: types of production by scale of social organization; non‐agricultural production and scale of economic development; sex and role differences in everyday work; and value shifts affecting family functions and productive behaviour. In Part II are presented illustrations of house‐hold production from different regions and cultures of the world, and in Part III, suggestions about measures of household production patterns, which may permit cross‐cultural