Never Done: A History of American Housework

by Susan Strasser

Finally back in print, with a new Preface by the author, this lively, authoritative, and pathbreaking study considers the history of material advances and domestic service, the "women's separate sphere," and the respective influences of advertising, home economics, and women's entry into the workforce. Never Done begins by describing the household chores of nineteenth-century America: cooking at fireplaces and on cast-iron stoves, laundry done with boilers and flatirons, endless water-hauling and fire-tending, and so on. Strasser goes on to explain and explore how industrialization transformed the nature of women's work. Easing some tasks and eliminating others, new commercial processes inexorably altered women's daily lives and relationships—with each other and with those they served.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Womens, Feminism, Womens Studies, American History, Cooking

384 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1982

Reviews

[Jon Frum · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was a combination of positives and negatives for me. On the pro side, Ms Strasser covers quite a bit of interesting history about every day life, which I find fascinating. There were two cons that stuck out to me. First, there were chapters that featured the works of writers of books on domestic matters, which is an entirely different subject than the history of what women actually did in their homes. This may be of interest to the academic, but it pulls the book away from its central topic. The second con was the tendency to slip into a sophomoric anti-capitalist language at the end of chapters. One example is the claim that women chose home washing machines over using commercial laundries because the washing machine manufacturers 'just wanted to make a profit.' Horrors! Women chose what was best for them - get over it.

If you're interested in this subject, definitely read this book. The information it contains is worth putting up with the extraneous material.

[Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every time I turn around there's something else to do

Cook a meal or mend a sock or sweep a floor or two…

(“Gonna Be an Engineer”, Peggy Seeger)




Never Done: A History of American Houswork is a history of the American home, focusing on the work done within it, one which demonstrates how households became centers of consumption, instead of production. It’s a marvelously meaty work, divided into sections that not only show how chores evolved, but other elements within the household – like the now abandoned practice of taking in boarders. But more than a history of the home, it’s the story of American housewives, whose labors used to provide material value, not just aesthetic comfort; their chores carried meaning beyond keeping the carpet free of dust and the dishwasher full.




Those who complain about the chore of laundry today – “Put the clothes into the washer! Take them out! Put them into the dryer! Take them out!! When will it ever end?” are, in a word, wimps. Maintaining a household’s laundry- - clothes, towels, sheets – used to entail an entire week of labor, beginning with extended soaks before laborious hand-washing period, which included a separate ‘bluing’ phase to preserve the whiteness of said sheets. And at the same time, mother laundress would be cooking full meals from scratch, often tending a fire to do – and depending on where she lived, usually fetching entire tubs of water per day to do the washing, cooking, and cleaning with. And the cleaning! Cleaning meant more than washing the dishes and dusting the tables. Cooking with fire or oil meant soot, and processing food from scratch produced grease, and this soot and grease got everywhere; little wonder spring cleaning was seen with such dread. And at the same time, household materials had to be produced – preserves for the winter, candles for the night, clothes for the children. And we complain about vacuuming!




Such labors were eased first by fundamental innovations – the introduction of indoor plumbing, gas lines, and electricity – and then by convenience appliances (washing machines, which in their first stages still required an awful lot of work) gadgets (which did most of the work) and still later by completely processed goods (ready-made meals, disposable utensils) that took the work out of it completely. After having witnessed the demands of household labor prior to the late 19th century, the appearance of such aides is welcome….but the avalanche of consumer goods that appears in the final chapters gives one pause. As industry left the home – as the services that ran it became things to be purchased – the home and housework lost its meaning; decaying into chores,. Strasser covers the response of women to this, the attempt to elevate Home Economics to the status of business and industry by making it more ‘efficient’’ – but ultimately, the home was abandoned as women chose instead to pursue careers, and in fact had to help pay for all the new services and products they were being acculturated to expect. After growing up on canned biscuits, after all, who wants to start making dough by hand?




Although our lives have plainly become easier, there’s a certain wistfulness to the author’s writing; in some of the interviews, mothers express regret over some of the way their lives have changed. One in particular misses the time she spent with her kids washing dishes after supper; such moments of togetherness are increasingly hard to find, and emphasized the importance of the family taking care of one another’s needs; a childhood chore like keeping one’s bedroom straightened doesn’t make that connection. Strasser is more distinctly uncomfortable with the reduction of wives and mothers – of people in general – into consumers, something she presumably explores further in Satisfaction Guaranteed, and touched on in Waste and Want.




Never Done was Strasser’s first work, and it's quite an introduction. It's slightly more academic than Waste and Want, but considering how broad an audience Waste and Want was written for, that's not saying much: this is still very lively, closer to narrative history than textbook -- and yet it's carrying as much information as a text, covering virtually everything that happens within its walls. This is wonderful social and domestic history.

[Eileen O'Finlan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book seems aptly named given how long it took me to read it. However, that is not the fault of the book. I used it as part of my research for my second novel, Erin's Children, which is scheduled to be released by BWL Publishing, Inc. in December of 2020. The fact that I went back to it much later after I'd taken from it what I needed for my research shows that it was interesting enough for me to want to finish it.

In Never Done: A History of American Housework, author Susan Strasser looks at the changes over the centuries of various aspects of housework and childcare which have long been predominently the work of women. She documents not only the changes in labor saving devices, but also how those changes impacted attitudes towards work done in the home, the move away from home made goods to store bought (factory made) goods, and led to women working outside the home.

Never Done is an interesting look at housework, childcare, and the methods used to accomplish them, how they changed over time, and the shift those changes brought to American society.

[Sheryl · Rating 3 out of 5]

When this book is actually a history of American Housework, I found it fascinating, even though a lot of it was review for me. Much of what she had to say on some of the experts -- Catherine Beecher and Charlotte Perkins Gilman in particular -- was also review for me, but I didn't enjoy it as much. And as Strasser worked her way up into the twentieth century and began discussing women I actually knew (my grandmother's generation on down), it got to be a bit of a slog, I thought, because she was spending more time complaining about how businesses and professionals viewed housework than discussing actual homeworkers. She did give me much to think about, in terms of how "outsiders" have tried to convince homeworkers to live a more consumer lifestyle, but her solutions to this problem don't strike me as credible.

I thought a lot of her observations on how manufacturers and advertisers have encouraged Americans to surrender to a materialist view of the world are correct, but only part of the story. There were other things going on that played into this shift toward materialism. Furthermore, Strasser’s solutions are just another form of materialism. She blames capitalism and praises more socialist or communist systems, but to me she's trying to solve a problem, caused in the first place by embracing materialism, with yet another materialistic system. Even when it comes to pure materialism, history teaches, pretty clearly, that capitalism brings wealth, while socialism destroys wealth. The U.S., like most European countries, has a mixed capitalist/government controlled economy, but people try to fudge the data by defining socialism as "the government helps people," and claiming as purely socialist countries like Sweden. Sweden has high personal taxes, and a lot of government-driven social programs, but has in many ways become more capitalist than the U.S. when it comes to laws that control business.

But the problem in the U.S. is not so much our economic system as our belief system. As Strasser herself points out, American women had to be convinced to embrace the idea of becoming efficient and treating housework as if it were a business -- a process doomed to failure in households with children, because children do not function well in a business-style environment, nor can those in charge of children work the way someone in a business environment can. Don Aslett offers a brilliant and hilarious illustration of this in one of his cleaning books. He'd been a cleaning professional for some time when his wife went on a trip by herself, and instead of hiring a babysitter and the like, he decided to take some time off to apply his supposedly superior skills in management and cleaning to the household. Not surprisingly, his cleaning and management skills were not sufficient to maintain the household to the supposedly lower efficiency his wife regularly achieved. Kids don’t work that way.

Strasser does touch on this a bit, in her chapter on children, pointing out that the experts specifically attacked the foundation of a well-run home with infants or toddlers in it. "If mother love sufficed, if maternal instinct knew best, there was no place for the experts or the books they wrote... [therefore experts] made mother's love into a problem, the source of overstimulation and undernourishment.... Experts who recommended tying infants to their beds and carefully described the sounds of cries of pain so that mothers would ignore cries for unscheduled feeding, human contact, or other 'indulgences' could hardly afford to celebrate mother's love."

Strasser regularly recognizes that women learned best how to run their households from other women, and that turning to experts from the public world is not the way to go. But at the same time, partially because she focuses on the "experts" rather than the every day housewife, she regularly turns the homemaker into a passive entity who is manipulated by the experts, with no other recourse. For instance, in her final chapter, she insists that "family life requires two paychecks," without ever recognizing that most people could still live on one paycheck, just as they did generations back, if that is what the family decides to do. I have been told since before this book came out that it's "impossible" to live on one pay check, but at the same time I knew plenty of people who did it. And, since we married in 1987, we have lived on one paycheck, earned by a man without a college degree, while we raised five kids.

The problem isn't that it's "impossible" to live on one pay check; it's that society has discouraged that choice for so long that most people no longer know how to do it. Back when “two can live as cheaply as one” was a common saying, the “one” was a man living on his own with no real housekeeping skills, meaning that he was eating out for most meals, or paying room and board, and he spent most of his time working (work days were much longer then), and so had little time to comparison shop. The reason “two” could live just as cheaply was that the wife could cook and sew and shop and otherwise save the husband considerable money. Most families now can afford to live on one pay check, if they live the way my parents did, back in the day – in a two-bedroom home 1600 square feet or so, with one car, eating nearly all meals in the home, etc. And really that sort of restraint isn't necessary -- hubby and I had far more luxuries than my parents did, at the same ages, and even when hubby was supporting us by delivering pizzas.

It’s the drive to meet the consumptive standards set by the corporations Strasser condemns that make it “impossible” to live on one paycheck, which is yet another example of how Strasser has embraced the very attitudes she condemns.

Ultimately, my problem with this book is that I felt the author doesn't really respect the people doing the housework, any more than the experts she condemned did. She insists that "Both sexes must seek public solutions to problems they have formerly construed as private, bringing pressure to bear on those who conceive and direct American production, employment, and consumption in the upper echelon of the corporations that give people jobs and produce goods they buy." In other words, she tells people that these problems are too big to solve on their own; they must change the entire culture before they can be happy.

Which is nonsense. A "one size fits all" solution to these sorts of problems is even more uncomfortable than a "one size fits all" piece of clothing -- it fits few people well, and a goodly percentage of people not at all. While the Victorians wanted to sort men into one sphere, and women into another, Strasser wants to stuff everyone into the same box! Strasser is right in condemning the cultural standards that make housework the woman's job, and right to condemn the fact that people judge the woman in the home when it comes to cleanliness (other members of the household may have far more influence on the situation than the woman does). But the solution is not to blame the man, should he be the one staying at home. And the solution is definitely not to make this private problem more public.

The solution is to let people resolve their own private problems, and for outsiders to mind their own business. Some people will choose to keep a messier house than others. Some people will farm out cleaning (which is never done to my mother's standards); while others will rely on a homemaker who stays home, or on the obsessive cleaner in the family (who will be allowed to slack off elsewhere); or will establish a reasonable standard of cleanliness that a family with two parents and some children can achieve. What will free people is when we, instead of expecting the same level of tidiness and cleanliness in the home as demanded by big business, allow people to establish their own standards, and accept them.

In a trend Strasser herself recognizes, many people have allowed businesses to take over much of what an old-fashioned housewife accomplished; cooking, cleaning, and child care are all farmed out. Strasser's problem is that the people hired to take over these duties aren't doing as good a job as a full-time housewife did. I agree with her entirely that most housewives did a better job. But I would argue that there's a reason this is true that has nothing to do with finances or the business world, and everything to do with the fact that households are doing something important and valid that Strasser is no more attuned to than the business world has been.

It is not the actions of "the public" that change these things. It is not "the public" that needs to celebrate "the human values of love and community that lost their status," as Strasser claims. Individuals and families are perfectly capable of having a "vision of a better future," here and now. But most who do have that vision strongly disagree with Strasser's belief that the solution to our problems is to make private life more public. The solution is to reclaim our private lives, and to care for those within them.

[Jessica Hageman · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lot more positive and encouraging than I anticipated. Rather than writing in the spirit of complaint and negativity surrounding the (hard) work that women have done over time for their homes and communities, Strasser draws upon the history of domestic technological advances and cultural attitudes toward domestic duties and insists upon the dignity of women's work in the home. Not a Christian book, so take a lot with a grain of salt, but this was largely a helpful and inspiring read.

[Ashley · Rating 2 out of 5]

One of the longest 300-ish page books I've read. The concept was interesting, but the writing was so dry and read like a textbook. Thank goodness there were pictures interspersed to break out the massive walls of 8 pt. font.

The book has a decided feminist slant to it, though I suppose it's fitting given the topic. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, probably most well-known for her short fiction story The Yellow Wallpaper, which I quite liked, made quite a few cameos here as an activist.

There were a few things I found especially interesting:
1. Spring cleaning began as a way to clean the home after being cooped up in it all winter with sooty fires to keep warm/provide light.
2. In Philadelphia, water consumption per subscriber doubled between 1823 and 1837, the time in which the city completed its new public waterworks system. It had doubled again by 1850. The advent of availability of water in demand in the home had the predictable result of vastly increasing consumption.

Overall, I found this read on the tedious side - though I'll give the author her dues on research and exhaustive exploration of the subject.

[Grayson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Besides being a look at how the American household went from 18th century production of needed family goods to the 1980's consumer culture (which was when the book was written), this is also a feminist history of how the "women's sphere" -- the home -- was viewed by popular culture.. I especially enjoyed reading analyses of 19th century female writers of housekeeping manuals. Their imagined future for the family home was frequently over-romanticised, and many of them -- I'm looking at you, Harriet Beecher Stowe -- managed to convince themselves (at least on paper) that the inconsistencies of feminine idealism didn't exist. Strasser discusses some of the technology developed in the quest for easier housework as well.

Strasser is an excellent writer, and I must admit that her descriptions of pre-industrial tasks make me ever so grateful for my electric stove, my clothes washer, and my refrigerator. I definitely recommend this for anyone who likes histories of rarely-discussed aspects of the past.

[Daniela · Rating 4 out of 5]

Strasser is a historian who teaches at U of Delaware. She treats housework as a microcosm of a broader social phenomena -- the American woman's shift from producer to consumer. She argues that we're losing the emotional importance of home life and becoming increasingly isolated, shrewd buyers of products. The orientation of our work has changed. The book is a descriptive, historical account of changes within different arenas of housework (cooking, washing clothes,cleaning, etc.) Interestingly, the period between 1880 and 1920 produced technology for housework that has survived fairly unchanged until now (most major household appliances and services used in 1920 are still used today). She discusses the rise of Taylorism and home economics and its effect on the housework and its perceived value.

[Kristi · Rating 3 out of 5]

This study of American housework covers a broad period of time from the early nineteenth century into the 1970s. As such, it demonstrates how industrialization impacted women's daily lives and the practicalities of housework. However, large chronological jumps often had the effect of disjointing that trajectory. As a reader, I wished that Stassner had spent more time immersing the reader in the processes of housework and experiences of women in a given period. While there is an assortment of interesting details, at other times the narrative superficially glides over chronology such making meaningful distinctions is lost. Much of the material in this book I was familiar with from other studies of domesticity, industrialization and consumerism, yet this is a useful survey of the subject and foundation book for later studies.

[Alexandria Blaelock · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a reprint of her original 1982 (not a new edition) and while the work women did hasn't changed, academic theories have, so in some ways the book reflects outdated ways of thinking.

But it does provide some detail about what they did, and how they managed - not just the physical labour, but their attitudes towards it. Not to mention that the notes and references offer other historic perspectives over time as well.

[Gwen · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 Stars. While very interesting, the author moves toward exploring the historical transition of American women to a consumer role rather than focusing on just the history of housework itself. I would have liked more in-depth details regarding the minutiae of daily housework and life for the early American woman.

That being said, the author is obviously highly intelligent and has done extensive research on the topic. I would read her other books.

[Ida · Rating 5 out of 5]

Must read for women who wonder why they have more things than support. The money economy is not rewarding by design.

[HM · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great photos throughout history of women’s housework. I guess it was a little depressing. I thought it would be more of a fun journey, but it was very detailed. Later on, it got heavily into feminism, which was also kind of sad. Feminism so devalued women. They really underscored that you weren’t really “working” if you weren’t drawing a paycheck. I understand how we got here and that some women were abused and taken advantage of, but feminism didn’t do people like me, who wanted to raise their own children, any favors. I think I would have enjoyed this book more if it had been a lighter overview about interesting parts of housework at each point in history. That’s my issue, though.

[DeDe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very interesting to follow the timeline through thr evolution of housework.

[Trisha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great and entertaining book!

[Aileen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great overview of the history of housework and women's place in the home. Read this and you'll never complain about doing laundry again.

[becca sporky · Rating 3 out of 5]

she goes back and fourth from the 18th and 19th century a lot, which is interesting. she also quotes little women a lot.

[Lies · Rating 4 out of 5]

(Later meer lezen - heel goed boek over industrialisering van het huishouden, afbakening van privé-sfeer, huishoudelijke waarden en hoe die veranderden in de 20e eeuw in Amerika)

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

For the most part I really enjoyed this book and the history of housework that it explored. It brought to light many things I hadn't considered as our world became more modernized, such as the loss of community for women when everything started being done inside the home, alone. I was fascinated by how products came to be, and how often appliances like the fridge, took decades to catch on. I was with this author until the last chapter when she appears to have gone off the deep end. The last chapter turned into a rant against divorce, self-help and therapists, massages, vibrators, fast food chains, and many other topics. She somehow romanticizes 19th century living, while also saying that it was a difficult way to live. So, clearly she has some other theories that she needs to get off her chest. Other than that though, I'd recommend it to anyone who loves history.

[Cissy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Like reading a textbook...lots of great information, a bit tedious to wade through. I admit I read only about 3/4 of the book, choosing the chapters that were interesting to me. I certainly felt grateful for my own easier housekeeping circumstances; and, I gained a new perspective of how inventions, industry, advertising, etc., work together to affect the lives of women and their "sphere". I think I would prefer reading a collection of articles on these topics rather than this massive, small-print tome.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was hoping, when I picked this up, that it would be "an equal, wide survey." It isn't--it leans heavily to the nineteenth century, and then packs twentieth century developments into the last quarter of the book. Still, the information is useful, relevant, and generally well presented, although slightly repetitive (Strasser, I think, suffers from an academic's anxiety that no one will read the book cover to cover).

[Philana Walker · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this book. The idea of housework and the "advances" made throughout history to make things more efficient as a means of bondage to the machine is great. We have become a society less interested in social ties. Gone are the days of washing and gossip. Things were so rough back then, but now we have microwaves and dishwashers, washing machines and the kitchen stove.

[Kathywelch]

While this may sound like a less-than-exciting book, it works (and goes a long way in succeeding) to prove the thesis that modern American women have technology to blame for the overworked position that they now find themselves in.

[Diana · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a book on what our grandmothers and great grandmothers used to put food on their familys tables. I will admit it was slightly dry reading, but I ended up enjoying reading about some of the crazy things they used to make caring for their families easier.

[Maureen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I attended a course at The Evergreen State College co-taught by Susie Strasser in 1980. Our class was fortunate to preview drafts of this future book's content. The discussions in the class enhanced my knowledge and appreciation of women's history.

[Peter Wilhelm · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm 20% of the way through. Interesting information, but unfortunately so far reads more like a list of facts than a story. And some of the facts aren't particularly new or surprising. But it does paint a good picture of what it was like to survive a winter without central heat or electricity.

[Theresa Donovan Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book will make you tired just thinking about how hard women worked at household tasks just a couple of generations ago. Great for understanding U.S. socioeconomic history, the women's movement, and our own moment in time.

[Erika Mulvenna · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was a great read, I gained a new insight into the history of the modern American family as well as how immigration affected our country in the early 20th century.

[Al · Rating 4 out of 5]

Never Done: A History of American Housework by Susan Strasser (2000)

[K.A. Okagaki · Rating 3 out of 5]

You'll never look at housework the same again