The Term “Home Economics” - Part One

What follows is part one of an article that I wrote for Christians for Biblical Equality who both asked me to write it and who turned it down. Comments as to why would be appreciated. I don’t believe that “lack of space” is the real reason.

Upon the vote of the faculty on October 7, 1994, Olivet Nazarene University changed the name of its Home Economics major to Family and Consumer Sciences. I was present at that faculty meeting, and I remember thinking that it was a smart move designed to attract a wider audience and perhaps participants to the major. Little did I know all what went into that decision locally, particularly how the move was based on what was going on in the profession at large.

The name “home economics” was adopted in 1899 in Lake Placid among individuals interested in the subject area from among a number of alternatives including “domestic science,” “household arts,” and “domestic economy.” Melville Dewey, among the early supporters of the term “home economics” thought the term would help the field have a greater accessibility because it would come to be seen as a social science. (Simerly 2000, 75) The new term worked well for nearly a half century and gave the field of study a sense of cohesion.

By mid-twentieth century, however, a number of factors led towards the need for a change. With more women entering and staying in the workforce and with the birthrate declining, the family took on new and nontraditional forms that loosened the sense of holistic cohesion that had existed in the field before. The increasing pressure from industry for training in more highly specialized fields led to core home economics college courses being reduced and more specialized majors being developed. By the 1990s over 75 different names were being used for the field and the previous sense of cohesion and identity splintered due to a lack of agreed upon philosophical underpinnings and mission identity. Along with a growing sense within society that the term “home economics” was increasingly archaic, the pressure grew for a new name that would help bring more of a shared sense of identity and better reflect the changing nature of the field, particularly its increasing diversity and complexity.

Demographic changes in families during the last half of the 20th century were rapid and widely felt. According to a 1998 social survey conducted by the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center the percentage of American households that contained married couples with children had dropped from 45 percent during the 1970s to just 26 percent in the year of the survey. The same time period saw a drop in the percent of children who lived with both parents from 73 percent in 1972 to 51 percent in 1998, and the percentage of children living with just a single parent rose from 4.7 percent to 18.2 percent over the same years. However, “Americans continue to see marriage as an ideal,” according to Bahira Sherif, a professor of individual and family studies at the University of Delaware, “even if they don’t think it’s always best to get married or stay married.” (Irvine 2000, 74) The bottom line seemed to have remained that building a family meant stability and therefore a goal to strive for. The confusing, rapidly changing, and even alarming picture of the American family certainly needed study and attention.

But alarming trends were also occurring within home economic associations and university home economics departments. Within the twenty years between the 1970s and the 1990s the American Home Economics Association (AHEA) lost more than half its membership. The number of home economics major units within colleges and universities was experiencing a similar decline and some felt that the field was in serious danger of collapse. So in 1992 a task force was created to set up a process for the AHEA and four other home economics organizations to create an identity statement, restate the breadth of the profession’s mission, and either reaffirm or propose a new name for the field. Part of that process included a national conference that was held in October, 1993, in Scottsdale, Arizona, where after much intense but thoughtful debate, 77 percent of the attendees voted to adopt the new name, “family and consumer sciences” as a name for the total profession. (Simerly 2000, 78) Four out of the five professional organizations participating then changed their own names to reflect the new name of their profession.

With the new name the profession continued to maintain its “commitment to individuals and families, to the ecological perspective, and to the integrative focus while recognizing that family and consumer sciences professionals can contribute to the mission through both generalists’ and specialists’ perspectives.” (Simerly 2000, 79) With a renewed sense of mission and shared identity, as well as a new commitment to the realization that professionals in the field practice in work fields like government, education, industry, business, and public service, the newly renamed profession and area of academic study started to flourish again.

Many if not most universities quickly brought their home economics departments in line with the decisions made as a part of the Scottsdale initiatives. Within a year, even conservative, teaching-oriented universities like Olivet were making the jump to the new name. The 1994-1995 ONU catalog shows the Home Economics Department having a Home Economics major with a dietetics concentration, a foods and nutrition in business concentration, a fashion merchandising concentration, a family services concentration, and a general home economics concentration. Four other majors were also offered: a Home Economics Teaching major; a Child Development major; an Early Childhood Education Teaching major (taught in cooperation with the Education Department); and a Housing and Environmental Design major.

The new name, Family and Consumer Sciences Department, took effect in the Fall of 1995, and is reflected in the ONU 1995-1996 catalog. Five bachelors’ majors are mentioned with no concentrations: a Family and Consumer Sciences major; a Family and Consumer Science Teaching major; a Dietetics major; a Fashion Merchandising major; and a Housing and Environmental Design major. Dr. Diane Richardson, current chair of the Family and Consumer Sciences Department, who was present during the change, insists that even while changing the big noticeable things like department title and the way majors were laid out, nothing of substance throughout course offerings was changed. In fact, a close comparison of the two catalogs confirms her assertion and uncovers only a couple of course renumberings and not a single word change in course titles or descriptions other than the name change itself. The current 2007-2008 catalog adds the Child Development major back in as well.

And the department has flourished. The number of majors in the newly renamed department quickly more than doubled and now includes both young men and women. Not wanting to put the entire weight of the success on the name change, Dr. Richardson suspects that at least some of the success of the department in recent years is due to the growing reputation of her program. “Sometimes we forget the old ‘home ec’ image – just cooking and sewing – ” she says, “no longer has much basis in reality. Many of our majors graduate with a minor in chemistry.” Heavy doses of biology, computer science and business are also required of many of her majors.

The name change from the originally adopted 1899 term “Home Economics” to the new 1993 term “Family and Consumer Sciences” has been well received. Not only have a growing number of colleges and universities been adopting the name, but “today (2000), 48 states have adopted the name for secondary school programs and it is widely reported that the name has been well received by teachers, students, parents, administrators, and the community at large.” (Simerly 2000, 79)

The term “homemaker” has continued to decline in use as is seen in further name changes like the 1999 Future Homemakers of America move to change its name to Family, Career and Community Leaders of America. “Because our name had become outdated, we found it much harder to communicate to teens what our organization is really about – building leadership skills and addressing important personal, family, work and societal issues,” said Brandon Abbott, the 18-year-old FCCLA National President. “We hope that the new name will help teens get past the ‘homemaker’ stigma and into the details of how much work we do with the issues young people really care about, like school violence, family relations and career preparation.” (Anonymous 1999, 132)