The Secret History of Home Economics
The Secret History of Home Economics: How Trailblazing Women Harnessed the Power of Home and Changed the Way We Live is a 2021 nonfiction book by journalist Danielle Dreilinger. The book explores how different areas of skills, knowledge, and investigation were brought together under the umbrella of "home economics", and how the field's focus and reputation have changed over the decades in the United States. Summary In The Secret History of Home Economics, Dreilinger, education reporter for The Times-Picayune for five years, examines how the focus of home economics swung back and forth between being a method for women to obtain scientific education to vocational training for future wives and mothers. With the expansion of colleges after the Civil War and particularly the land-grant universities which were coed, leaders in education favored curricula focused on vocational education. "Domestic science" courses were offered for women at a number of schools during the latter half of the 19th century. This approach was fiercely debated; the president of Bryn Mawr College argued that domestic science would not nurture intellectual growth, and there were concerns among Black communities that domestic science was too much like the manual labor expected under slavery. At Tuskegee University, Margaret Murray Washington ran the domestic science department and offered public community education, as well as publishing Work for the Colored Women of the South, a household manual for Black rural women. Ellen Swallow Richards, who had trained in chemistry, determined to improve the home through science, thus improving society. Richards wrote books about food adulteration and how to make use of chemistry in the household. The approaches taken by these women to make improvements in home life through education were the foundation for later advances. In 1899, Annie Dewey and Richards held a conference in Lake Placid, New York with the goal of convincing universities to treat the home sciences seriously for the purpose of creating "a new profession demanding adequate compensation." The attendees settled on "home economics," positioning it as a subset of general economics. The Lake Placid conference was held annually for ten years, consciously constructing home economics as a profession for women, and would become the American Home Economics Association in 1908. The Lake Placid conferences did not invite Washington or representatives from any historically Black colleges. By 1910, more than 200 colleges and teach-training schools, and about 900 elementary and high schools taught home economics. The need for home economists was urgent during World War I, with the need to encourage and educate Americans how to conserve food for the war effort. Washington coordinated food-conservation efforts among Black communities. The American Dietetic Association was formed in 1917 to focus on military medical-nutritional requirements; its co-founder, Lenna Cooper, was appointed supervising dietitian for the Army. Martha Van Rensselaer took on the home economics work for the US Food Administration. Home economists published recipe booklets, created menus, and identified a raft of food substitutes to encourage conservation of limited staples. The Smith–Hughes National Vocational Education Act of