Home Economics and the Progressive Movement

There doesn’t appear to be agreement on the exact dates of the Progressive Movement with regards to American history. However, the era started in the late 1800s and concluded around the end of World War I. Most will agree that this era encompassed a few decades on either side of the turn of the century.

During this time period, women were taking positions about the many inequities in the country such as women’s right to vote, women in higher education, and women working outside the home. Leaders such as Frances Willard, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Antoinette Brown Blackwell, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Susan B. Anthony, Carrie Chapman Catt, and Jane Addams were just a few of the women who attempted to change the way the country was governed and the way women were treated.

While laws such as the Morrill Act in 1862 had opened doors for some women in higher education and domestic sciences in particular, for the most part, women in the home had to rely on tradition to carry out their duties. If things were to improve on the home front the source of information must be the experts. Hence, the door opened to organize the profession of home economics. In Just a Housewife, Glenna Matthews says that although the Lake Placid attendees in 1899 had good intentions with respect to the home,

“They set a process in motion by which the devaluation of the female craft tradition, an important component of the ideology of domesticity, was greatly accelerated. In order to establish their own profession as worthy, they perforce needed to denigrate the quality of housewifely competence.”

While this assumption might be arrived at easily after 100 years have passed, most would doubt that those at the Lake Placid Conferences deliberately sought to undermine the homemaker’s traditions. The home economists were interested in efficiency, sanitary practices, and also scientific principles, none of which influenced the home as they perceived it in the late 1800s. Glenna Matthews reminds us that

“One of the characteristics of the Progressive generation was a reforming zeal dedicated to overhaul a broad range of institutions and practices. That the pioneering home economists were imbued with the spirit that underlay Progressive reform is clear from the sheer scope of what they were trying to accomplish. They wanted to help the housewife by simplifying housekeeping. They wanted to train teachers. They wanted to prepare brochures for dissemination by the federal government. They wanted to establish an outreach to farmers’ wives. They wanted to study the ways in which standards of living are affected by sanitary science.”

By the end of WWI, home economists had gained the status and importance they were seeking. Women were enrolled in higher institutions across the country and becoming teachers in the secondary home economics programs. Research was continuing in areas of nutrition, housing, consumer products, and child rearing. There was a growing professional organization with a published journal disseminating the research. The Bureau of Home Economics was established as a part of the Department of Agriculture in the federal government. The bureau was established at the urging of groups such as the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, the League of Women Voters, and the PTA.

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