Home Economics
International Encyclopedia of Marriage and Family | 2003 |
Home economics as a field of study in the United States was formed before the start of the twentieth century by a group of women, most of whom were scientifically educated and reform-oriented, as well as men who were interested in applying science and philosophy to improving everyday life. Frustrated by the lack of opportunity for educated women in the male-dominated disciplines, they met at the Lake Placid Club in upstate New York to create their own interdisciplinary field of study and profession. The Lake Placid Conferences on Home Economics (1899–1909) culminated in the founding of the American Home Economics Association (AHEA) and theJournal of Home Economics. The field's mission has been to improve family wellbeing by enabling families to be successful in their reciprocal relationships with the environments in which they function. With the industrial revolution, some family functions shifted to factories, hotels, bakeries, restaurants, nursing homes, and schools, making policy concerns relevant. As a result, the field expanded its work, adding development, delivery, and evaluation of consumer goods and services; educating policy makers about concerns of the field; and attempting to shape social and even global change. Consequently, the field has provided many career options for both men and women in not-for-profit organizations, businesses, and government.
Social changes in the United States prompted the creation of specialization in many fields. These changes included exponential knowledge growth, the bustling economy during and after World War II, better public education that prepared more people for higher education, expanding public support for higher education, increasing government support of research, and developing specialized accreditation. Other changes also encouraged specilization within home economics; they included diversification of family structures, the aging population, increases in working women, technological changes, the women's movement, and increases in the number of men in the field.
For the first sixty years of the twentieth century, five specialty areas made up the core of this research-based field, but between 1970 and 2000, more distinct specializations developed (Richards 2000). The five specializations evolved as follows:
- Foods and nutrition, and institutional management added dietetics and food science;
- Child development and family relations later broadened to human development and family relations, adding family therapy as a specialization;
- Clothing and textiles became apparel and textiles and added textile science and merchandising of consumer goods;
- Housing and home furnishings developed into interior design of commercial as well as home interiors with particular emphasis on enhancing human well being;
- Consumer economics and home management evolved into family resource management, then family management, while consumer economics remained a specialization.
The name, home economics, became increasingly inaccurate in describing the work of this discipline with subspecialties studying different family functions and problems. In 1993 the new name, family and consumer sciences, was selected at a conference held in Scottsdale, Arizona, entitled Positioning the Profession for the 21st Century. Four of the five attending professional organizations (the American Home Economics Association, the American Vocational Association's Home Economic Division, the National Association of Extension Home Economics, and the National Council of Administrators of Home Economics) adopted the name change in 1994. The fifth chose human sciences instead. Internationally, the field is referred to primarily as home economics, but other names such as human ecology and home science are also used.
Scholarship and Practice
Family and consumer sciences represents a broader vision, revised conceptual framework, and reconceptualized core body of knowledge for the field. Increases in family and societal problems; ecological concerns and resource limitations; negative, unintended consequences of capitalism; the increasingly global economy; and increases in ethnic and racial diversity called into question the belief that science and its resulting technological developments would solve all our problems. Continuous progress could no longer be considered inevitable. Clearly the step-by-step procedures and sequential problem-solving processes used by laboratory science would not provide predictable results in solving human problems. Even problems themselves were re-conceptualized as opportunities for learning rather than something to be avoided (Richards 2000). These intellectual changes in the field's root disciplines (chemistry, biology, physics, math, philosophy, psychology, sociology, economics, and the arts and humanities) as well as in home economics itself, reinforced a shift away from technical information and procedures toward critical and creative thinking and ethical reasoning.
Traditionally, professionals in the field have studied the everyday lives of individuals in the family as the fundamental social unit, as well as the family's interactions with the larger environments. Over time, the field's increasingly strong specializations became disciplines in their own right, even though they remain vital to the interdisciplinary field as a whole. No other profession or discipline has such a holistic approach to studying and optimizing family life with emphasis on problem prevention.
In the United States and Australia, some professionals embraced Marjorie Brown and Beatrice Paolucci's 1979 definition of the field as a critical science. They question the continuing dominance of scientific reasoning; encourage examination of the field's purposes, assumptions and questions; and urge it to renew its focus on enabling families themselves to foster the development of healthy, responsible, capable and compassionate individuals. Brown and Paolucci also argued that individuals and families should reflectively participate in the critique and formulation of social goals and means of accomplishing them. Using Jürgen Habermas's philosophy as a basis for their new conceptualization, they argued that synthesis of analyticalempirical, interpretive, and emancipatory knowledge (resulting from use of critical theory) was necessary to address practical problems of families politically, ethically, socially, physically, economically, and psychologically. This requires increased critical thinking and moral reasoning; theoretical and interdisciplinary work; evaluation of existing social practices, norms, and assumptions; and emancipation from ignorance and distorted views resulting from such things as prejudice, trauma, repression, oppression, and useless conventions. Critical science emphasizes political-moral action.
International Contributions
Over the years, home economists in other countries have contributed significantly to strengthening programs aimed at women, families, and children (O'Toole and Nelson 1988), and to formally and informally educating women, increasing understanding and appreciation of other cultures, improving public health, and improving the process of introducing change (O'Toole et al. 1988). Home economists in the United States began to become involved outside their country at the start of the twentieth century when mission boards hired graduates to assist in establishing home economics departments in schools and colleges in other countries to improve the living conditions of the people with whom the missionaries worked (O'Toole and Nelson 1988).
Several professional organizations also have facilitated international involvement. The International Federation of Home Economics, IFHE; the American Home Economics Association (now the American Association of Family and Consumer Sciences, AAFCS); and the American Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges, AASULGC (now the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges, NASULGC) have been active internationally. The IFHE is the only international nongovernmental professional organization concerned with home economics as a whole. Founded in 1908 in Friburg, Switzerland, IFHE brings together institutions, organizations, associations, and individuals from more than 110 countries worldwide to further the mission of home economics. IFHE has been involved with several United Nations Conferences on Women, including the 1995 Beijing conference. It has consultative status with UCOSOC (United Nations Economic and Social Council), UNESCO (United Nations Education, Scientific, and Cultural Organization), FAO (Food and Agricultural Organization), UNICEF (United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund), and other United Nations and international agencies. IFHE also cooperates with other international nongovernmental organizations related to home economics to strengthen and promote home economics concerns and exchange information (Davis 1999).
The AHEA's affiliation with IFHE began in 1915 (Nelson 1984), only a few years after its own 1909 founding. More extensive involvement began in 1922 when AHEA sent delegates to the Third International Congress in Paris (Davis 1999). This European professional work influenced the early development of home economics in the United States, discouraging emphasis on mere techniques and increasing attention to the thought patterns involved in education for family life. After the 1958 IFHE Congress in Maryland, U.S. memberships, attendance at congresses, and participation on the elected IFHE Council increased (Nelson 1984).
The AHEA published a steady stream of articles in its journals and multiple nonserial publications; it has also adopted almost twenty resolutions on international topics resulting from its members' international work. The association sent teachers to China in 1915, to Europe for home economics teacher exchanges after World War I, and to Turkey in 1920 to facilitate university program development. By 1959 more than 100 home economists were serving overseas (Davis 1999). In the 1960s and 1970s, home economists worked in multilateral efforts in such United Nations agencies as FAO, WHO (World Health Organization), UNICEF, ILO (International Labor Organization), and UNESCO. The AHEA was an invited member of the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO in the 1960s and 1980s.
Work of home economists from the United States with international visitors and students here and abroad has clearly had an impact on families bilaterally. Perhaps the greatest globally has resulted from AHEA/AAFCS sponsorship, beginning in 1930, of hundreds of international students who sought to do graduate study in the United States (Nelson 1984). Recipients have come from a wide variety of countries to study in various institutions, and many returned home to take leadership positions.
Since its creation in 1976, the AHEA/AAFCS International Section has conducted many national and international workshops and international projects. It has cooperated with other association sections and divisions, producing publications, working with many other national and international organizations, and facilitating contacts for members wanting to be internationally involved (Davis 1999). For example, concern about world population growth and hunger prompted AHEA collaboration with USAID (Agency for International Development), UN agencies, and the International Planned Parenthood Federation to initiate the International Family Planning Project that served thirty countries in the 1970s (Davis 1999; O'Toole and Nelson 1988). Other efforts included the Inter-American Commission on Women and foreign government collaborations. The necessity of developing U.S. global appreciation led to the AHEAUSAID Global Connections project. In it, home economists developed country profiles on daily life in thirteen countries to teach thousands of students, members, and adult education program participants more about the world. In the 1980s and 1990s the demand for professionals overseas with multi- and bilateral agencies declined, but educational institution study and research opportunities grew (Davis 1999).
As a higher education administrators' organization, AASULGC/NASULGC members encouraged their faculty and extension specialists to do international work. They sponsored conferences funded through U.S. government programs and universities. The early government aid programs influenced the education, role, and status of women in other countries and helped to create an awareness of the meaning of home economics and its value to individuals and families. The Pan American Union (renamed The Organization of American States in 1948) opened opportunities between the 1930s and 1950s for extension home economists to help rural families train local leaders (O'Toole and Nelson 1988). In the 1940s, U.S. foreign aid to Europe and developing countries provided home economists with assignments in Greece and Turkey as consultants and advisors, helping to establish home economics extension and college programs. In post-World War II Europe (1948–1950), home economists were an important part of the Marshall Plan Economic Recovery Program, working in conjunction with the U.S. government, the YWCA, YMCA, and the Fulbright exchange program. Home economists continue to participate in Fulbright programs. During the Kennedy administration home economists were involved in USAID, the Peace Corps, and the Alliance for Progress in Latin America. After 1955 a shift in U.S. foreign aid brought requests for assistance in establishing home economics in schools at all levels and extension community development programs in India and Pakistan.
The strength and vitality of home economics varies worldwide. In Asia, it is strong in higher education. Advances are being made in many Asian countries; research is being conducted, and the discipline is attracting significant numbers of young people. In Latin America there are few units in higher education institutions, but more at the intermediate level in teacher-training programs. However, both Brazil and Colombia have strong higher education programs. In Central and Eastern Europe, home economics training is growing as a result of work done by the IFHE Committee on Outreach.
Bibliography
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virginia b. vincenti
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"Home Economics." International Encyclopedia of Marriage and Family. 2003. Encyclopedia.com. 9 May. 2015<http://www.encyclopedia.com>.
