The earliest time studies of housewives date from the very same period in which time studies of other workers were becoming popular-the first three decades of the twentieth century. No one had to shovel out ashes or beat rugs or carry water no one even had to toss egg whites with a fork for an hour to make an angel food cake.Īnd yet American housewives in 1960, 1970, and even 1980 continued to log about the same number of hours at their work as their grandmothers and mothers had in 1910,1920, and 1930. No one had to chop and haul wood any more.
The dryer replaced the clothesline the vacuum cleaner replaced the broom the refrigerator replaced the icebox and the root cellar an automatic pump, some piping, and a tap replaced the hand pump, the bucket, and the well. Clothes that had once been scrubbed on a metal washboard were now tossed into a tub and cleansed by an electrically driven agitator. This is the surprising conclusion reached by a small army of historians, sociologists, and home economists who have undertaken, in recent years, to study the one form of work that has turned out to be most resistant to inquiry and analysis-namely, housework.ĭuring the first half of the twentieth century, the average American household was transformed by the introduction of a group of machines that profoundly altered the daily lives of housewives the forty years between 19 witnessed what might be aptly called the “industrial revolution in the home.” Where once there had been a wood-or coal-burning stove there now was a gas or electric range. And laborsavine household appliances often do not save labor.
0 kommentar(er)
