Is Home Economics Still Relevant in the 21st Century?

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Many people view home economics as an outdated or exclusive area for women, unaware of its relevance and potential to change the world.

Is Home Economics Still Relevant in the 21st Century?
Photo by: monkeybusinessimages.
Reading time 5 minutes
Reading Time: 5 minutes

Many people see home economics as an antiquated field or an area exclusively for women without seeing its relevance and potential to change the world.

Often, when hearing about home economics, people think about cooking or sewing classes and attribute them exclusively to women. However, many do not know all that is behind this field of study and its impact on students’ lives.

This study emerged in the late 1800s, and its creation is attributed to Ellen Swallow Richards, the first woman to be admitted to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She was a chemistry teacher at that institution and aimed to promote scientific education in women.

The first home economics classes incorporated various scientific disciplines as it sought to professionalize women’s work and make it more effective in freeing them from their household chores. They sought to give women time to do more things beyond just cooking and cleaning, like focusing on their education. The domestic economy was conceived to enable more women to attend college as they were taught to take care of their home and family more suitably.

Although many consider the area to be sexist, the domestic economy was no stranger to feminist principles, but quite the opposite. In 1899, Richards brought together progressive women to develop the curriculum for the courses, which became an organized study due to the efforts of Ellen Swallow Richards and Catherine Beecher. They founded the American Home Economics Association (now known as the American Association of Family and Consumer Sciences ). The association held annual meetings to pressure the government to raise more funds. Richards was president of the association until she died in 1911.

Farmers’ wives

Ellen Swallow Richards and Catherine Beecher were not the only women to promote domestic education. In 1862, the Morrill Law led to universities’ creation so that thousands of farmers could receive higher education. Many of these universities had home economics classes for women. The purpose was that they would better manage the home so that they could help in agricultural work.

Among the people who taught women were Martha Van Rensselaer, a teacher, and Flora Rose, a nutritionist, who gave courses at the New York State College of Agriculture, part of Cornell University. In 1912, they were appointed co-directors of the home economics department within that institution.

Unlike the scientific orientation of Ellen Swallow Richards’ courses, those at Cornell were more experimental. Students were assigned a real baby from an orphanage, and the women were taught the latest theories about raising children. At the end of the school year, infants would be given up for adoption. By 1950, more than 50 institutions of higher education incorporated “practice babies” into their curricula.

The seven areas of home economic

To ensure that the female students learned to manage their home and family better, Richards and Beecher divided the study of home economics into seven areas: cooking, child development, education and community awareness, management and design of the home, sewing and textiles, budget and economy, and health and hygiene.

  • Cooking: This section is a fundamental part of household chores, so it was important to teach women how to prepare balanced meals based on nutrition principles. Also, they learned about safety and how to preserve food to prevent diseases. Supplementary to this, they learned how to set the table and organize meals for their families and friends.

  • Child development: Teachers assign babies from orphanages to the students. The purpose was to learn about child development and respond correctly to children at their various developmental stages.

  • Education and community awareness: Because responsibility for children’s education fell to the mothers, they learned the best ways to teach children to read or know basic math before entering school. The children also learned moral and ethical lessons to develop community awareness.

  • Home management and design: In this section, the essential design elements for home decoration and the best ways to maintain order in the home were taught. Topics included cleanliness and organization, as these were household tasks assigned exclusively to women.

  • Sewing and textiles: Sewing was necessary for many women. It allowed them to make clothes for themselves and their children and repair it if required to last longer. Students learned everything from how to follow a pattern to understanding the best material in cloths to buy.

  • Budget and economy: An essential skill in maintaining an efficient home for women was creating an account. It was usual for women at the time, and often today, to do all the family shopping, so it was crucial for them to learn how to use money wisely.

  • Health and hygiene: It is equally fundamental for young women to know how to prepare and preserve foods to prevent diseases taught how to care properly for the sick. From sanitary procedures to feeding them, they needed to understand how to care for the sick in an age of common diseases.

In favor of bringing back home economics

Many students leave home for the “real world” at 17 or 18 years old as they study at a university in another city. Glorified for being independent, they soon find that they do not know how to cook nutritious meals or create a monthly budget, not to mention sewing a button or caring for their sick companion.

Beyond teaching students to solve trigonometry problems, it is vital to instruct both women and men with useful knowledge they might need every day. According to a study on home economics and family and consumer sciences, it is unnecessary to reduce class hours to include home economics in the curriculum. Reading, math, and writing can be incorporated into lessons on nutrition or budgeting, for example.

In her opinion piece for the New York TimesHelen Zoe V
eit
, an associate professor of History at Michigan State University, notes that “over time, the basic principles of the health and hygiene discipline became so widespread that they seemed like common sense. As a result, the early proponents (of home economics) came to be thought of as simple spinsters rather than the innovative and scientific women they were.” Dr. Veit also notes that stereotypes dominate this field. Home economics courses are seen as women’s classes, and the importance to all people, men, and women, of knowing about food, health, and maintaining a clean home is forgotten.

From 1975 to 2019, obesity tripled in Latin America, and malnutrition has increased by 11% since 2014. Part of the problem comes from processed foods and junk food and the lack of time for families to cook for their children. Another problem is that young people do not know how to prepare a balanced meal for themselves. Here is where home economics classes can be helpful.

For example, England began with food education for all children in elementary and secondary schools starting in 2014. That same year, Danish schools were required by the government to teach alimentary courses to improve the food consumed by the students.

In 2010, in an article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the authors Alice H. Lichtenstein and David S. Ludwig argued that classes in this area could help combat childhood obesity by teaching young people the basics not only of cooking but also nutrition.

Kateika: the Japanese example

Japanese schools teach home economics (kateika 家庭科 in Japanese) in fifth grade and continue it during middle and high school. Students learn everything from cooking, meal planning, and shopping to sewing and building wooden furniture in these classes.

These activities were made mandatory in 1947 in the hope of bringing gender equality into the homes. Even the country’s leaders, like Takuya Mitani, a health education planner in the Japanese Ministry of Education, attribute the leveling of gender roles to home economics. Tadaharu Minamino, the first male home economics teacher in Osaka Prefecture, said to CBC Radio Canada regarding this, “People would not be as healthy today as they are, and gender equality would not be as prevalent. The boys also learn to sew and babysit. Because of that, we now have this younger generation of men who are contributing to raising their children.”

However, to get to this point, kateika had to change its goals and adapt to current social conditions. At first, it was focused on teaching skills for daily life and making young people independent, but now it is not just about that; it also teaches problem-solving. Its integration arose because the Japanese believe that the student should be instructed to face any problems that occur in the future; therefore, it is essential to teach them to evaluate different solutions and choose the best.

From classes on doing housework more effectively so that women have time to study to combating obesity, home economics is a field that significantly impacts society.

When much is said about soft skills or power skills, it is important not to forget essential life skills. Perhaps these are not what employers seek, but they are the abilities that will help the student adapt better to adulthood and can be applied every day.

Translation by Daniel Wetta.

Paulette Delgado

This article from Observatory of the Institute for the Future of Education may be shared under the terms of the license CC BY-NC-SA 4.0