Here’s why it may be time for much-maligned home economics classes to make a comeback

The oft-misunderstood field spans science and nutrition and promotes that cooking and cleaning is undervalued as a form of labor. Home economics has been a “back door for women to enter science” that turned into an “empire of jobs and influence,” Danielle Dreilinger writes in “The Secret History of Home Economics.”

And personal finance was a big part of that: Women, despite not earning income, controlled the household purse. Home economists spearheaded important consumer finance protection programs and helped consumers find efficient and frugal ways to improve their homes. At the turn of the 20th century, it offered women a way to study science and nutrition and have a viable career path.

While home economics has been viewed as the pursuit of white women, there were many leading Black home economists. Margaret Murray Washington, Booker T. Washington’s wife, served as Lady Principal at what would become Tuskegee University. She was a huge proponent of what would become home economics, believing that education and home improvement would reduce prejudice.

Q: It seemed like the heart of the book was really about women’s invisible labor and how we’ve undervalued skills like homemaking, cooking and cleaning throughout history. Home economics, in part, professionalized that and provided a career pathway in that work for women. I asked Lorna Saboe-Wounded Head, a personal finance home economics expert at South Dakota State University, what the difference between having a home economist teach personal finance versus a business professor. And she said the business professor just doesn’t have an interconnected mindset.

ericasnoww djdreilinger Home Ec, for me at age 14(male) in 1980, was great. Just enough sewing where I could fix a button or do a quick repair, enough cooking to not burn the house down. As a latch-key kid left on my own with 2 working parents, these skills were invaluable and I still use them today.

ericasnoww djdreilinger Well not only that highschoolers are leaving high school without any basic skills on how to run their life! Who cares by the time we got into high school how many times of Washington cross the Delaware if you can’t balance a gosh darn checkbook!

ericasnoww djdreilinger horrible

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