More Work For Mother: The Ironies Of Household Technology From The Open Hearth To The Microwave

by Ruth Schwartz Cowan

In this classic work of women's history (winner of the 1984 Dexter Prize from the Society for the History of Technology), Ruth Schwartz Cowan shows how and why modern women devote as much time to housework as did their colonial sisters. In lively and provocative prose, Cowan explains how the modern conveniences—washing machines, white flour, vacuums, commercial cotton—seemed at first to offer working-class women middle-class standards of comfort. Over time, however, it became clear that these gadgets and gizmos mainly replaced work previously conducted by men, children, and servants. Instead of living lives of leisure, middle-class women found themselves struggling to keep up with ever higher standards of cleanliness.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Feminism, Technology, Gender, Womens, Sociology

288 pages, Paperback

First published December 11, 1983

About the author

Ruth Schwartz Cowan is an historian of science, technology and medicine, with degrees from Barnard College (BA), the University of California at Berkeley (MA) and The Johns Hopkins University (PhD). She was a member of the History Department of the State University of New York at Stony Brook from 1967 to 2002, attaining the rank of Professor in 1984. Between 1997 and 2002 she was the Chair of the Honors College at SUNY-Stony Brook; she also served as Director of Women's Studies from 1985-1990. As of October, 2002 she is Professor Emerita at Stony Brook.

(from http://www.cns.ucsb.edu/people/ruth-s...)

Reviews

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading this book, but I was constantly wavering on whether I was on board with her arguments or not. I completely agree with what I thought was her basic argument- generally in American history over the last couple centuries, technological achievements have tended to eliminate "men's" household work but not "woman's" work. For example, men used to have to spend a lot of time gathering fuel for fires, felling and chopping up trees. Then women tended the fires. But as coal and oil replaced wood for fires, that job started to disappear for men, while women still had to tend the fires, and sometimes their jobs got worse, as coal fires were smoky and messy. Also, obviously, houses have gotten bigger over time, and since it was seen as 'woman's work' to clean the houses, their jobs have become harder and more time consuming.
I was a little puzzled by Cowan's argument that innovations which would help alleviate housework have "failed". She uses commercial laundries and ready made meal delivery services as examples, and argues that these were attempted in the 1920s but didn't pan out, because people valued their private lives at home and would rather purchase washing machines and cook their own food. But these things didn't really die out, they still exist. Lots of people send their laundry out and buy ready cooked meals, especially in cities. It seems like the same economic calculation for everything- every person needs to decide if they are willing to pay for the services. Lots of people are not willing or able to pay, so they do laundry at home and cook their own meals. Cowan sort of gets around to writing about this at the end, when she argues that what we really need to do is get rid of this idiotic idea that men can't do dishes or cook or do laundry, that somehow women are the people who are supposed to do these jobs. I agree with her that this is ridiculous.
I also felt like she should have spent at least a little more time on peer pressure as a factor in woman's work. She writes about advertisements, but it seems like family pressure and church pressure have probably been just as important as ads. Nobody wants to be the one bringing a store bought pie to a family get together if everyone else is making their own. You can't contribute a recipe (or several) to a church cookbook if you can't cook from scratch. There just tends to be this general expectation for women that they know how to cook, not that they HAVE to for financial reasons, but that they are ABLE to. That expectation isn't really there for men, except maybe for grilling. Women are expected to take pride in not taking the easy way out by purchasing a ready made pie. Maybe I just have this on the brain because I read this over Thanksgiving.

[David Dinaburg · Rating 4 out of 5]

There’s a parable that I heard recently that sums this book up pretty well: frog soup. You can’t just drop a frog into boiling water, but if the water starts out cold, and the heat is ever-so-gradually increased, before you or the frog knows it, there is no more frog and no more water but instead, a pot of soup. More Work for Mother can be broken down into a number of constituent parts, each a synecdoche on its own, but my favorite bit of “soup” is the vacuum cleaner.

Such is the tale: before, cleaning the rugs required someone physically strong—typically the husband—to lift and carry heavy rugs. Then, someone with much energy and more spare time—typically the child(ren)—beat the rugs. The remaining task, sweeping the area where the rug once lay, was left to the wife. En totale, the work of cleaning a rug was very intense, and rarely done: spring cleaning was once-a-year—the spring, duh—for a reason. But now, oh, now, in this wonderful atomic future, the rugs, they must be clean, because it is ever-so-simple to flip the switch and push the electronic sweeper around a bit. Guess who gets to run the vacuum while the rest of the household is excused from the lifting and the beating? Well, yes, it is mother! And what chores supplanted lifting the rugs or beating the rugs while mother vacuums? Nothing, of course, the home is a place of leisure. For men. And children. The frog gets a bit hotter.

There are many more examples, each interesting in their own way. White flour was surprisingly and particularly interesting from a historical standpoint: the steam engine unshackled mills from rivers and shifted industrial concentration to centralized factories, allowing the growth of urbanization. White flour “…is composed of very small particles of the endosperm of the grain, and lacks the germ and the bran.” It didn’t spoil as quickly as the whole grains ground at the local grist; it fact, it keep long enough to be shipped overseas to feed the foreign armies of the Napoleonic Wars. Once those wars were over, the industrial mills—created and optimized to grind ultrafine white flour—flooded U.S. markets with cheap white flour, which used to be the province of socio-economic posturing between the wealthy; cakes and fluffy breads became de rigueur.

That’s pretty great, right? Cheap flour! No more need for the laborious work of hauling grains to the gristmill, a task typically relegated to the physically stronger male of the household. No more need for hand-grinding grain, a tedious task usually left for children! Everyone has more time thanks to white flour! Oh, but...well, everyone but mother:

The course flours that were produced by hand grinding or grist milling of wheat and rye were prepared into “quickbreads,” porridges, and griddle cakes, none of which required complex or laborious preparations. Yeast breads, when prepared by the standard technique of the time, required hard labor (in the kneading) and considerable attention to details (particularly in maintaining yeast cultures)

And what chores supplanted reaping and hauling the grain or hand-grinding while mother kneads or whisks? You guessed it; nothing, of course, the home is a place of leisure. For men, and children, remember? The frog becomes the soup.

Oh, but don’t worry mother, technology will save you:

The eggbeater, which was invented and marketed during the middle decades of the [19th] century, may have eased the burden of this work somewhat; but, unfortunately the popularity of the beater was accompanied by the popularity of angel food cakes, in which eggs are the only leavening, and yolks and whites are beaten separately—thus doubling the work.

Angel food cake has fallen out of favor, probably because it takes the same effort of buy an Entenmann’s pound cake as it does to buy angel food cake; which is to say, none. "What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value." Thomas Paine, but for desserts.

More Work for Mother remains timeless and is a comprehensive text that should be required reading by every technological futurist who believes progress makes life better by default. It explains the ever-expanding desires of society better than anything I’ve ever read: easy to wash clothes because of washing machines? Clothes should be cleaner. Easy to bathe because of running water, water heaters, bathtubs? Personal hygiene must be improved. Easy to contact people because of telephones? Everyone must be available twenty-four hours a day. Ad astra, infinitum, forever and ever. Enjoy your soup.

[Clare O'Beara · Rating 5 out of 5]

I sought out this scholarly work after finding it hidden among the references of another more recent work; that book had two women's names among its references. In the notes of this book, P234- 249, I counted 113 names I could be sure were female. Index P251 - 257; I counted 30 names I could be sure were female.
Looking at the American home from pre-industrial days, when a household made most of what it required and traded for the rest, to modern times, the author asks what work was assigned to men or women and how each changed. She finds that a woman's work was laborious and heavy before piped water and electric or gas supply. Thus, people often weren't very clean and their homes were poorly lit and crowded.
As work became available in cities and manufactured goods circulated, the concept of a housewife was invented. This was a woman whose labour was all or mostly at home, cleaning, feeding, clothing the family. Nursing the sick was part of her work, also midwifery and laying out the dead.
The author says that work traditionally assigned to men, like gathering firewood, hunting meat and driving the cart, shrank or vanished and women got to do that work. The reason was electric and gas power, shops and cars. The author never mentions that the men looked after the horses, harness and carts, a job in itself.
Women had appliances invented for them, but the early ones were not much improvement, like washing machines which still required sopping and mangling, then ironing. Families needed to earn more to pay for: stoves which needed cleaning and blacking; refrigerators; sewing machines; washing machines; cars; electric cookers; better washing machines, electric irons; vacuums and more.
Some women worked in every time period, so we get to see the richer and poorer homes and jobs, and we note that a woman always had staff if she was wealthy or a woman for a day a week if she was poor, to do the heavy work, usually washing and cleaning. The cost of labour rose as immigrant women reduced in number and the Depression made hiring people impossible for the poor. Thus machinery was all the more necessary if children were to get to school clean and fed and a man to his work.
I noted no mention of people with disabilities - what happened if someone had polio, lost an arm or went blind? Were they not mentioned in the literature?
I also saw little mention of the children being made to do work, except in the chapter where we are told that girls learned from their mothers and boys from their fathers what tasks to do and how. The later chapters show children at school or at play, when older kids were pressed into service to mind younger ones and help with cooking and cleaning or piecework for an outside employer in reality. Certainly in my home I regretted being taught how to make a pot of tea and answer the door, as it seemed I was always called upon. This despite the fact that by five I had read several books in which the boys got to go out and have adventures but the girls had to stay home and help around the house, so I had decided that I was going to be like a boy.
I really enjoyed reading about the households of America in all their variations. The photos and drawings of the day are particularly good. The author seems to have found no shortage of sources, from accounts of daily lives to theses on plumbing or gas refrigerators.

I borrowed this book from the Dublin Business School library. This is an unbiased review.

[Kirsti S. · Rating 3 out of 5]

MCL.

Pretty interesting. I think she makes her case that technology hasn't necessarily saved much work for women, but I would have liked her to spend a little more time exploring the suggestions for alternatives.

[Bella Book · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting! I’m thrilled that I read this book and it’s given me a useful vocabulary around technological systems and domestic labor. It’s definitely of its time in some pretty striking ways, particularly around poverty and the assumption of middle-class values as the norms. I don’t know how to think about her ultimate conclusion just yet and also think there is a darker history of domestic labor policing that could have been explored further, though is it fair of me to ask that of a technological history? (Yes, I think so).

Highly recommend for the historical analysis and reflections on domestic labor (particularly given the Covid related impact of women’s paid work) but also caveat that recommendation because parts of it haven’t aged well.

[Adèle · Rating 5 out of 5]

C’est super bien écrit et vraiment instructif, autant d’un point de vue historique (on dirait qu’on lit un musée) que féministe! Une solide et pertinente remise en question de cette idée (trop) populaire que la technologie a simplifié la vie des femmes en tant que ménagères.

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Throughout the 20th century, households were transformed by a new abundance of labor-saving devices, from washing machines to toaster ovens, and processed goods that reduced housewives’ workloads, leaving them free to learn trades and professions of their own and fully participate in the modern world. But in the second decade of the 21st century, American women are just as chore-taxed as ever, lamenting of the ‘second shift’ that awaits them upon arriving home. Despite the many machines now investing our homes, most of the work still has to be done by hand, for Parkinson’s Law holds true there as well as anywhere else: work expands to fill the time available for its completion. In More Work for Mother, author Ruth Cowan demonstrates how gadgets and goods created new work while eliminating others, and argues that women will not be free from drudgery until housework is freed from the realm of ‘femininity’ to the point that men won’t feel emasculated by laundry.

The devices and goods of the 19th and 20th century – refrigerators, washing machines, microwaves, convenient bags of flour, even more convenient no-bake cheesecake mixes, even more convenient instant cereal -- did indeed reduce a lot of labor. In fact, for men they reduced virtually all household work. More Work for Other opens with a history of housework. Although modern readers might be aware that women’s traditional role was in the home, men’s traditional role was in the home, as well; prior to industrialism, men didn’t pack a lunch pail and disappear into the country for a day at work. The home and the work of most families were intimately connected, typically inseparable. Women may have baked bread, but it was men who gathered and ground it; women may have washed clothes, but men chopped the wood and let children lug in the water. But while men’s roles in the household largely vanished, women found that work remained constant. The availability of affordable clothing reduced the need for sewing and repairing, but increased the burden of laundry, and standards of cleanliness climbed as the ability to clean increased. Laundry and scrubbing agents meant that minor stains could no longer be tolerated, necessitating near-daily cleaning regimens. And those new labor-saving devices were often fragile things, needing frequent cleaning to avoid their works being gummed up. Additionally, for middle class or wealthier women, the availability of do-it-yourself machines meant that retaining maids and other servants was a sinful waste – never mind that doing it themselves meant more hours of their own time spent doing the labor, regardless of advertisers’ claims of quick ease-of-use. There were options that might have truly revolutionized household chores – commercial kitchens with thrice-daily delivery, commercial laundries, cooperatives, apartment hotels – but most fell by the wayside, either because of cultural imperatives or because of market forces.

Although not as sweeping as Susan Strasser's Never Done, what's lost in extensive narrative is replaced by more serious analysis and an abundance of good points made. Cowan notes, for instance, that the increase of standardized products destroyed easy class differences: while in the mid-19th century a street urchin and the scion of a wealthy businessman would look as different as night and day just judging from their clothes' cleanliness, today both could wear the same products, and the fact that vitually all homes have water and heating means that no one is denied the ability to shower every day. The interior of homes, too, are far closer than they once were; the absence of gadgets and electricity might have once marked a hovel, but these days not even campers will tolerate going without a refrigerator. Her driving point is that the fact that homes are now filled with gadgets and manufactured articles doesn't mean that homes are no longer productive; mothers are still 'producing' clean bathrooms, fed children, and presentable clothing. If the labor women perform was priced as though they were in the open market, people would never assume homemaking to be unproductive. Ultimately, Cowan believes women will be freed from drudgery only when we relax fanatic standards regarding cleanliness and the housework that remains is stripped, through cultural or technological means, of its traditionally female association so that men will pitch in more. If that argument, made in 1985, has lost some of its edge in a 21st century peopled by "Mr.Moms" , most of the work has not.

[Elisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting read about a side of the industrial revolution that you don’t normally think of. Interesting enough that it kept me reading and coming back for more but some chapters were extremely boring and could’ve been skipped or shortened.

Learning the history of household technology was interesting but I am disappointed with the conclusion of the book which was to me, vague and unsatisfactory. I would, however, like to read other books that would continue with the subject.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

In "An Introduction: Housework and Its Tools" she places household work within the stream of industrialization of America. Household were industrialized form 1860-1960, at the same time as the idealized households emerged as retreat from a heartless world. Much of the irony of this observation results from the observation that women were users of technologies that embedded them firmly within market relations all along. Like the male and female workers who went out into the factories, women working in the homes of America were increasingly confronted with technologies which they had not build and the internal workings of which they did not understand. Since housewives cannot repair the tools with which they work "houseworkers are as alienated from the tools with which they labor as assembly-line people and blast furnace operators." (p. 7) While men's work became more specialized, housewives in the 20th Century remained the last Janes of all Trades from which the Jacks have disappeared.

Cowan is interested in understanding why the gendered household division of labor has proceeded as it has. To do this she examines the tools of household work. She examines the "work process" and the "technological system" that surrounds these tools. By understanding process, we come to understand who is actually doing the work. By understanding system, we can understand all of the parts that go into making changes in work possible. For instance, the system of technology which brings indoor plumbing is the underpinning of our increased standards of personal hygiene.

"Housewifery: Household Work and Household Tools under Pre-Industrial Conditions" draws an initial connection between the rise of capitalism in Early Modern Europe and the institution of household work. Freed from feudal constraints, the early modern yeomen and their wives developed a household economy. It was industrialization, not capitalism that lead from "Housewifery and the Doctrine of Separate Spheres." As industrialization drew men out of the home, it left women in the home to guard a separate sphere of morality and uplift in a heartless world of industrial capitalist competition. Cowan makes the essential contribution of adding in the tools of housework to help us understand the material conditions under which the doctrine of separate spheres emerges. She focuses on "Household Tools and Household Work" by approaching what it took to create a simple one pot meal in colonial New England. She finds that the process that a family undertook to cook the meal relied upon the work of both men and women, each having essential parts to play in the process. Men would harvest the grain and grind it into meal and women would assemble the ingredients and do the cooking on the open hearth. Though these divisions were not absolute, the cooperation of man and wife was essential to the family's survival. Women who tried to do without men or visa versa would have live far less healthy lives.

"The Household Division of Labor" ensured that men and women were socialized to different roles. Looking at the experience of a woman named Rebecca Burlend, who's husband was injured and unable to harvest the wheat crop, she demonstrates how important it was that the male knowledge of how to harvest the crop was shared with Rebecca who was unable to finish the task until her husband was well enough to explain the process to her. This sexual division of labor was embedded in a system which also took advantage of hired help. Most families paid wages to people to help lighten the burden of housework for women and work in the fields for men. There was also a hierarchy of tasks in which the work done by men was valued the most, then women's work (cooking the food) and finally the kinds of less attractive work performed by servants (scrubbing floors).

In considering "The Household and the Market Economy," she points out that the ideal of self-sufficiency in pre-industrial America needs to be examined more closely. Looking to the tools that people needed to survive in the household, she points to two different widows situations and how having tools to produce goods for herself allowed the better off widow to stay out of the market and achieve greater efficiency through home production of goods. The wealthiest of all in a community, it this case a revolutionary war general upon his passing had a full accoutrement of tools to produce many household goods at home. Because he was least dependent upon market forces, the general came closest to achieving the ideal of autonomy from the vicissitudes of the market.

"The Invention of Housework: The Early Stages of Industrialization" starts with a recounting of all the ways in which industrialization would seem to have had a liberating effect on women. With the advent of gas powered light, there was no need for candle making; with the purchase of cotton cloth, there was no need to make homespun anymore; when you could get preserved milk in a can, there was less pressure to milk your own cow. By looking at the writings of women of the period, oddly enough they seem to be worse off, more overworked and frequently of worse health. By looking at the ways in which the processes that attended household labor as well as the system of technology which they were embedded, she can explain this apparent paradox. Returning to the one pot stew of the colonial New England family, she notes that the one ingredient in the stew that changed with industrialization was the flower, industrialization brought processed white flour into the homes of New England.

Examining "Milling Flour and Making Bread," she explains that the shift away from international flour trade after the Napoleonic Wars ended in Europe caused an oversupply of processed white flour, producers looked to domestic markets to sell the white flour. The growth of canals (Erie 1825 for example) made it less profitable for the New England farmer to grow grain, so people started to buy the processed white flower grown on the frontier. Next she explains that this change in the larger technical system meant that man were freed from the formerly odious and laborious chore of grinding grain. But the advent of white flour meant the opposite for women. The simple unleavened breads made with whole grain flower had put far less burden on women than did the new leavened white breads, pastries and cakes. White bread became connected with status. Only negroes, indians and the Irish ate the coarse breads now that all had formerly eaten.

Another set of innovations, leading to "The Evolution of the Stove" also had the same effect on the balance of household labor -- it shifted the balance decidedly in the female direction. The changes in iron production and the rise of coal and coke for fueling the forges that created the iron allowed for a more efficient manufacture of iron cook stoves. The innovations of Jordan Mott made the manufacture of cast iron cook stoves which used the cleaner anthracite coal. Thus emerged an industry that provided the market with the first consumer durable goods. The impact of this technical systems change was the lessening of male labor, since felling trees and chopping wood for fuel was no longer necessary. The effect on the process of cooking was that it became more complicated and complex. By the time of the Civil War, the cast iron cook stove had replaced the open hearth and women were producing ever more elaborate meals from recipes in the new cookbooks in the stores. And least we forget, the stove needed to be cleaned -- a job that fell to women as well.

The overall impact of industrialization was "More Chores for Women, Fewer for Men." As men were freed from the labors needed for tasks like milling grain and cutting wood, they increasingly worked for wages that allowed them to buy things like processed flour and cast iron cook stoves. Men therefore were less available to teach their sons the techniques of household work, and this male household work died out. At the same time women became even more tied to the domestic sphere in material terns as well as ideological. The advent of manufactured cotton cloth mean a greater demand for more varied clothes, and these clothes had to be cleaned more often as well. While early in the century, women might employ the help of a seamstress to produce clothes the advent of the home sewing machine meant that this burden fell largely on the wife and mother. Thus we see the material conditions that went hand in hand with the woman's sphere.

[Mark Bowles · Rating 5 out of 5]

A. Introduction: Housework and its tools
1. "Industrialization of the home" took place between 1860 and 1960
2. Household and market labor are similar in 3 ways
a) Both depend on non-human energy sources
b) The household is part of a larger economic system (we depend on others to bake our bread)
c) Households use tools that they don't understand or manufacture
3. This book looks at the history of housework and the tools with which it is performed
B. The Invention of Housework: The Early Stages of Industrialization
1. Household convienences in the 19th did not save time (ex. hand driven washing machine, egg beaters) because they reorganized the work to make it more complex
2. Example: the flour industry
a) When flour mills became industrialized in 1820 they offered a new fine white flour
b) This increased work for mother because this flour allowed more deliate cakes (angel-food) to be baked. Also white breads.
3. Example: the stove
a) Cast iron cooking replaced the hearth
b) Stoves required less fuel and provided more efficient heating
c) This brought more work because it allowed more complex meals to be cooked
d) The housewife could fast broil, slow simmer, and bake all at the same time.
4. The technologies decreased work for men but increased it for women
a) For men: Less wood had to be chopped, Piped household water, manufactured shoes
b) For women: Manufactured clothers meant more laundry, oil lamps required the cleaning of soot
C. Changes in Household Technology in the 20th
1. This century consists of 8 interlocking technological systems (food, clothing, health care, transportation, water, gas, electricity, petroleum)
2. The shift from production to consumption (food, clothing health care)
3. In order to use these technologies someone had to leave the home to get them (transportation)
4. Household utility systems (water): While this decreased the need for carrying water, new standards of clenlyness were adopted (cleaning bathroom, floors, toilets)
5. Household utility systems (gas, electricity, oil): The only work that this removed was that done by the man
D. Household Technology and Work (1900-1940)
1. The differences between the housework of the rich and poor were shrinking
2. Golden years (1900-1920)
a) The upper class: had paid servants, but this did not make her a lady of leisure (see John's book). They spent 60 hr/week cleaning, providing meals, dealing with children
b) Lower class: Less work because they lived in tenament buildings with other families, no storage areas, children and mothers worked
3. Between the wars (1920-1940)
a) Upper class: beginning to obtain washing machines, refrigerators, autos
(1) The was the period of the proletarianization of the household
(2) The washing machine did away with the laundry
(3) The refrigerator did away with delivery service
(4) The vacuum did away with the servants
E. The Post War Years
1. There was a spread of affluence allowing the household to have more appliances and therefore increasing the complexity of work
2. Housework becomes homoginized: Both the upper class and lower class housewives are doing the same job
3. There is more work for mother in a modern home because there is no one there to help her. Kids have new found after school activities that the mother is the driver for.
4. This is further complicated by the working mother.

[Fraser Sherman · Rating 5 out of 5]

The argument that women entered the workforce because modern technology freed them housework has been around at least 40 years. Cowan covers the counter argument, that (as the title says), tech makes women work harder. For pioneer families, "bread" usually meant flat breads, griddle cakes or other quick breads. When commercialy milled white flour became widely available, that meant yeast breads and later cakes, which required more work. 20th century medicine reduced the time required to care for sick kids, but the standards for child care (breast feed! Cook nutritious meals! Keep your house sanitary!) went up so again it was a zero-sum game.
Cowan looks at the impact of tech and the ways it put added demands on women (men and kids usually got their load lightened) or made it possible for women to work fulltime and still function as housewives. She also considers alternative options that didn't become as accepted as vacuum cleaners and washing machines did (hiring household help, professional day care, professional laundries). 4.5 stars.

[Erika Mulvenna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Harder to get through than Never Done by Susan Strasser or Just a Housewife by Glenna Matthews, and it covers about the same material.

[Lilly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall I really liked this book, especially the beginning and first half. In the beginning it talks about the period before the Industrial Revolution where men, women, and children all had to labor for their family's survival and had clearly defined chores based on gender, but still everybody worked together in and for the home.

While women and men would sometimes swap chores to help one another out, they mostly stuck to their expected chores and were trained in them. If the man or the woman got disabled for an extended time, the whole family was in danger due to either a lack of knowledge on how to do the chore or not being physically able to do it or they hired someone else. A man or woman attempting to do both sets of chores for an extended time could lead to exhaustion to the point of death but there would often be insufficient knowledge also. Basically by hiring out those chores (even the poor did this to some degree), the gender-stereotypical chores were preserved and no one was trying to do it all.

The author basically proves that the idea that nothing is produced in the home anymore is not true. Women are still producing the health of their families so to speak by providing clean clothes, meals, cleaning, shopping, and taking care of children and the sick. In the past the woman was helped in this labor by men, children, and servants. Even poor people occasionally employed servants and had help. Women were not necessarily hauling buckets of water, this was often done by children or servants. The author goes into all the specific of wheat harvesting, quick bread versus wheat bread, the simpler meals they ate earlier versus the more complicated and varied meals that were expected with the electric stove. She goes into great detail but this was very interesting to me.

With the Industrial Revolution the men and children were taken out of the home and everything in the home gradually became the woman's job and she couldn't count on either her husband or children to help. (This book was written in 1984). There were only devices such as the washing machine, the stove. The author argues women's housework did not decrease. It stayed constant or even became more complex or increased and she goes into women's diaries and letters to support her point. In the past there were groceries and other things delivered to the home and even doctors made home visits. With the invention of the car, it was women who started driving around everywhere and all those home services offered ceased to exist.

Overall I really liked this book and I tend to agree. The only things I didn't like were several references to Marxist feminists that made me a little uncomfortable. I don't really think the author agreed with abolishing private property or was against family units in general but still it was a little uneasy. She did say the only way to not have housework was for people not to have houses and she did go into the failed experiments around cooperative housework and cooperative living.

Today there are lots of services that deliver though and there are laundry services that will pick up and deliver laundry but the author was talking about the laundry service as if it didn't exist or maybe it didn't in the time/area this book was written.

She does go into working mothers a bit but back then there were way more housewives. She does offer asking men for help and relaxing today's cleanliness standards as solutions. Overall I thought this book was very interesting as far as the history involved.

[Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a little dated (written in the early 80s) but still has tons of interesting information. The premise is that although household technology keeps improving, women still spend the same amount of time doing housework -- why is that?
Since this book predates Amazon there is no way for her to know that things have come full circle. I hadn't realized that housewives of old had practically everything they needed delivered to them. With the development of the automobile, so too did mother's job change to driving around to stores and running errands all day. With that lens, the rise of home delivery again is a wonderful thing, especially for new mothers with babies and toddlers at home.
It was also fascinating to read about the different lives led by the "comfortable" and the rest of us over the last 100 or so years. For example, she points out how tenements had no kitchen storage and just one table that served all needs (homework, piecework, meal preparation, and eating) so that "good manners" of place settings and such were really only for the well-to-do.
It's great stuff, and essential reading for any mother struggling with why there are still so few hours in a day.

[Kerry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting book with a salient point that industrialization in the US shifted work around in gendered ways and more things became considered 'womens work's' as the steps involved in certain 'housework' and the scope of 'housework' itself changed form. I do worry abit about the generalizations in this book in a hyper focus on nuclear family (plus potential slaves or servants) but the lack of engagement with nontypical/subversive divisions of work whether that's multi generational households or queer communities etc etc. The author does has a chapter were she lists of alternative cultural set ups from Shakers to communal kitchens but I think she overlooks the folks that were less organized as a movement who were just living gender differently under the radar but I understand that she's worked with the biased nature of who/what history was recorded. Definitely an interesting book and something I'd recommend with the caution, probably caveot some of the author's generalizations more than she does.

[Jean · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this unexpected gem browsing through a second-hand bookstore. It stood out to me as someone who has never given more than a cursory thought to the relationship between technology and housework, given the seemingly logical convention that technology has reduced the general household burden on women.

The author's research gives fascinating insights into the lives of the more comfortable households and those less fortunate from the 18th through to the mid 20th century, tracking changes in technology and changing household work patterns. For example, the fact that technological developments through the 19th century eliminated the need for house work traditionally done by men but not women, who are still required to launder, cook, clean, rear children and look after the elderly/sick.

An interesting concept is 'proletarisation of work', tracing the changing attitudes of hired help to perform work what would have been regarded as 'degrading' work for comfortable households, to the 'do it yourself' attitude of taking pride in doing all the housework.

The book is well-written, engaging, and provides a very interesting insight into the everyday lives of women over the last 200 years. I came away feeling grateful for my comparatively unimaginable freedom from housework and for all the women who fought for it before me.

[Nolan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty good, though I think that what constitutes "work" for her seems to change based upon what era she is speaking about. I am by no means doubting that technology did not alleviate the load of women's housework (and in many ways further chained them to it), but the notion that each era caused an increase in the amount of time working is somewhat inconsistent. For example, early on whittling (for men) and sewing (for women) are almost seen as leisurely activities, yet later (atleast for the sewing) are seen as arduous. My main point is that there is only so much time in the day, and no person can work beyond exhaustion. That being said, the main rest of her argument was very well researched. Chapter on refrigerators and alternate paths was particularly weak as well, in my opinion. Maybe the final words would've had more of an impact on me if they didn't seem so self evident.

[Alyssa Bohon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really quite interesting. Anytime a writer puts themself to absolute loads of research and makes it into a readable book on a relevant topic, reading it feels like a privilege. I've thought a lot on this topic myself over the years, and it was satisfying to sink my teeth into an actual study of domestic work.

The perspective is mostly secular and somewhat feminist, but not violently so. The chronologically compiled research on the changing scene of housework pulled me in as if I were reading a story - which, I suppose, I was.

[Alicia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting take on how women have been overworked and their labor devalued since the industrial revolution.

I did not notice the publication date (1985) until halfway through the book. I would LOVE to read an "update" on how significantly things have changed since then. Women are now more or less expected to be part of the workforce, goods and services delivered right to one's home from online services, and how working online from home has changed the daily "housework" expectations for men and women.

[Julia Yoko · Rating 5 out of 5]

I went into this book thinking it would lean more traditional just because of the age, however it surprised me and helped my understanding of housewifery in the past and present and the possible unpaid labor I shall endure later in life as I plan to be a Mother eventually.
I think all women and girls looking to become Mothers should read this.
It helped me understand the nuance of being a housewife because whether you work, or do not, whether you have maids, or clean by yourself, it’s all the same and technology does not give the housewife leisure time like we were told.

[S. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not sure that I ever wanted to know as much as I now do about the invention of the modern electric refrigerator.

Even after finishing this book, I honestly don't 100% feel convinced about Ruth Cowan's thesis. But, nevertheless, this book is worth a read if you're curious--like I was, and still am--about the gendering of certain household chores...at least where the U.S. is concerned. I found the end chapters of the book fascinating, from post WWI until the 70s.

[Jeff Bobin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brief history of how technology has impacted the lives of women in caring for homes.

Going through many of the inventions like the washing machine, stoves and the vacuum cleaner and their affect on the how women spend their time. While these things save time in one place the expectation change as well.

[Lee Barry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book--dated yet not out-dated. I found it provided clarity about the history of my own family--and probably yours as well. Excellent context for current times.

https://huntersocfamilies.files.wordp...

[DM · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is both fascinating and the definition of a white feminist frame, with no engagement with race (especially striking as she is discussing literal settlers!). I think first chapter would be great for teaching.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Especially powerful since I visited Seneca Falls right after finishing.

[Pleasure Your Shelf · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating read

[Karen]

Learned of this book while Listening to Nice Try podcast Vacuum episode

[Beth]

Eye opening

[Felienne · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bit long winding here and there but what a new way to view to look at the history of housework and technology. A clear example of how a feminist lens makes a difference

[Sophie · Rating 5 out of 5]

sometimes social history really hits.