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Ruth Schwartz Cowan

More Work For Mother: The Ironies Of Household Technology From The Open Hearth To The Microwave Paperback – Illustrated, March 11, 1985

by Ruth Schwartz Cowan (Author)

4.5 47 ratings

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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.

Print length

288 pages
Language

English
Publication date

March 11, 1985
Dimensions

6 x 0.75 x 9 inches
ISBN-10

0465047327
ISBN-13

978-0465047321
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Editorial Reviews

Review

Why is it that "a man works from sun to sun but a woman's work is never done?" It hasn't always been this way, and Ruth Cowan's meticulously researched and engagingly readable book shows the transformation. More Work for Mother describes the change not as a capitalist or patriarchal conspiracy, but rather as a series of small steps away from the traditional farming family, with its gender-specific but equally time-consuming tasks, toward completely "separate spheres" for the sexes and households as units of consumption rather than production. Inventions such as washing machines, cotton cloth, and even white flour acted as catalysts by giving the less well-off a chance at the comforts the prosperous already possessed, but in general it was men and children whose chores were relieved by these innovations. Needing money to buy the things they could not produce, men left farming to become wage-earners, while children went to school, leaving Mother at home alone with "labor-saving" devices, no help, and raised expectations for yeast bread and clean clothes. Unfortunately, women's roles did not change as dramatically as the inventions, and our current housework rules and habits have their basis in issues of personal control more appropriate to times long gone. Even today, despite a grand array of high-tech gizmos, women still spend as much time on home maintenance as they did eighty years ago. We can't go back to our agricultural past, even if we'd like to, but historian Ruth Cowan shows us new ways to envision and direct our future. -- For great reviews of books for girls, check out Let's Hear It for the Girls: 375 Great Books for Readers 2-14. -- From 500 Great Books by Women; review by Jane Keefer

From the Back Cover

This book has a dual focus. As its title is meant to suggest, it is a history not just of housework but also of the tools with which that work is done: household technology. Human beings are tool-using animals; indeed, some anthropologists believe that, along with speech,, the ability to use and to refine our tools is precisely what sets us apart from other species of primates.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Basic Books; 0002nd edition (March 11, 1985)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 288 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0465047327
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0465047321
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.75 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #538,200 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #3,478 in Women's Studies (Books)
- #20,368 in Parenting & Relationships (Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.5 47 ratings

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Howard Juno

An entertaining, educational, reference-style book

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 3, 2021

Verified Purchase

educational, entertaining reference for what we like to call the good old days. bland prose
in places, lots of footnotes, but fun to read.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Karey

I bought this to replace copy I lost some years ago

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 14, 2013

Verified Purchase

I particularly like the analysis of the interaction between social, economic and technological factors. I wanted to re-read and refer to the chapter on refrigeration, which demonstrated how market concentration meant the less efficient compression fridge came to dominate the market over more efficient absorption refridgerators.

3 people found this helpful

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Long term customer

In search of the past

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 18, 2015

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This is a fairly quick and informative read. I noted the underlying political agenda but it didn't overwhelm the book. It provides some interesting details about the daily lives of our forbearers. In particular, I enjoyed the chapter about the technological innovations that didn't catch on, for whatever reason. Good value

4 people found this helpful

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AE Martin

Good for History Class

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 18, 2013

Verified Purchase

This book is great for a History Class on Technology, but the problem I see with it is that it seems to be jaded a bit by the writer. There is a counter position put out by Mr. Mokyr of Northwestern University.

4 people found this helpful

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Anadil Iftekhar

Good research went into the

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 4, 2018

Verified Purchase

A lot of data to back up claims. Good research went into the book

One person found this helpful

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klb

A must read for moms

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 26, 2005

Verified Purchase

I thoroughly enjoyed this book which provides a lot of insight into why modern women still are spending an amazing number of hours doing housework, in spite of vacuum cleaners, washing machines, dryers, and dishwashers.

14 people found this helpful

Helpful

History with a political agenda

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 26, 2004

This book is history of housework and household technology in America. Cowan's thesis is that American women have paradoxically been required to take on more and more work as "labor-saving" technologies have been adopted. At the outset of the book, Cowan seems to state that she will show that developments in technology have not really made women's lives easier, but have served to bind women ever more tightly to the home. But by the end of the book, the message seems to be slightly different: that household technology has raised society's expectations of what women should be able to accomplish in the home, and that women must now work harder because of double duty- -doing the housework in addition to holding down fulltime jobs.
The book is organized along chronological lines, starting with pre-industrial conditions, moving on to industrialization, and finishing with the years following the Second World War. Food and laundry are two topics that receive heavy focus throughout the book. Cowan points out that in the pre-industrial times, food preparation required considerable help from men, for such things as butchering animals. But once meat was available in tins, men were released from such food preparation chores, while women's work increased, since new stove technologies made it possible for women to undertake more complicated methods of food preparation. Cowan argues that laundry duties also increased following industrialization, since when fabric was homespun, people only owned a few items of clothing that were hardly ever washed, but once cheap factory-made fabric became available, people got in the habit of changing clothes quite often, resulting in mounds of items to be laundered.
But I'm not sure I fully agree with these arguments. Cowan seems to suggest that the change from cooking over an open-hearth to cooking on a stove complicated women's lives by increasing possibilities, hence expectations and time spent on the task. Had Cowan been able to observe first-hand lunch preparations over an open-hearth during a hot summer day, she might have been more appreciative of the benefits of a stove. Anyone who has visited such reenactment museums as Plimouth Plantation in July, or even tried cooking a full meal over a campfire, comes away amazed at how women managed to deal with the heat and frustrations of cooking over an open hearth, especially when wearing long skirts that were constantly prone to catching fire from drifting into the coals or getting hit with sparks. And the health benefits of having enough clothing to allow frequent laundering are also tremendous- -memoirs of even the well-to-do of the pre-industrial age are full of descriptions of the usual louse and flea colonies that were an active part of every household. Industrialization in the areas of food preparation and laundry may have not have resulted in time savings for mother, but it certainly made it possible for her to greatly increase the health and safety of herself and her family.
Cowan notes that running a household in pre-industrial conditions involved so much work that no single person could manage it alone. That's why men got married, and why anyone who could afford to hired maids. But following industrialization, Cowan argues that maids could get better-paying factory jobs, so mother got stuck doing the work of the maids. But is this really more work for mother? If the work load was so heavy that a housewife couldn't get by without a maid, and the maid disappeared consequent with the adoption of household technology, it's not that mother was stuck spending more time than ever getting her housework done, but that the new technologies enabled her to accomplish more in the time she had available. Indeed, Cowan even cites time studies that confirm that women were spending more or less the same amount of time doing housework, but they were able to accomplish far more in that time thanks to new technologies, such as automatic washers. And the problems of the double-duty mother never even arose until technology had improved enough so that a woman could hold down an outside job as well as keep the home running.
From the outset, Cowan states that this book is about the history of American housewives and their work, so she doesn't look beyond our borders for evidence that would support or negate her thesis. Her cultural blinders seem overly tight, however, when she discusses the difficulty of finding and keeping hired help as being a peculiarly American problem. Anyone who has tried to work with hired help anywhere in the world has had similar experiences- -nobody grows up wanting to be a maid. Traditionally and worldwide, maids come from an immigrant class, migrating from rural to developed areas, if not across borders, and leaving at the first opportunity of higher pay or prestige elsewhere. Living with household help has an additional disadvantage that Cowan does not consider- -the loss of privacy for the family. Perhaps letting the family cook or laundress go meant more work for mother, but the benefits of finally getting food cooked the way you like it, and not having the maid sort through the family's dirty laundry made it all worthwhile, especially if household technology made it possible to get the chores done by yourself anyway- -and get them done right for a change!
I know that it's impossible to write history free from subjective judgments. However, I have rarely encountered a history where the political leanings of the author come through so blatantly. Although Cowan never states explicitly that she is a "Marxist-feminist", the term arises in several places in the text, suggesting a clear political affinity. Cowan came of age and wrote this book in an earlier time. Today, perhaps, conditions have changed, taking the edge off the urgency of the issues she was implicitly battling by writing this book. The factual information and the window that she provides into household material culture is fascinating, if you can free it from her political agenda and wavering argumentation.

74 people found this helpful

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James Hoogerwerf

Home as a technological system? It's a stretch.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 2, 2007

When one thinks of industrialization, the image of a factory comes to mind. However, Cowan looks at the home as a productive venue. According to Cowan's thesis in an industrial society the work women perform as homemakers is tied to technological systems just like in a factory. Work inside or outside the home utilizes electricity, gas, or petroleum as sources of power, and manufacturing and homemaking each require the use of specialized tools.

Tools used in the home help to accomplish specific tasks but, Cowan argues, they "have a life of their own" and "set limits to our work."(9) While tools define behavior within the home, it is outside institutions (manufacturing firms, advertising agents, market researchers) that "mediate"(11) which devices are available for the woman to use in the home. For example Cowan points out that the electric refrigerator likely won out over the gas-absorption design due to the aggressiveness of electric utilities verses the more conservative gas manufacturing companies between 1920 and 1950.

Notwithstanding the use of labor savings devices, women's work has not become easier or less time consuming. Affluence and technology have made a woman's role more complicated and demanding. Partly due to circumstances such as the reduction of numbers of servants available to do drudge work in the home, the change has more to due with an innate human desire for "privacy and autonomy."(149) It is a "convention so deeply imbedded in our individual and collective consciousness that even the profound changes wrought by the twentieth century have not yet shaken it."(150)

Perhaps Cowan's best example of the effects of technology on the home is the stove. Food preparation was a cooperative effort between women and men to produce a simple one-pot meal over an open hearth in pre-industrial days. While the stove reduced the man's effort to maintain the fire, it allowed more complex meals to be prepared by the woman.

If industrialization seemingly reduces the effort necessary for a women to prepare and preserve food, make and maintain clothing, or be the health provider within the home, an entirely new role came with the advent of the automobile. The woman became the household's transportation provider!

The net effect of technology on homemaking has been to reduce drudgery but not labor. While women have become more productive in the home, what time is saved is now consumed by other tasks. In a further irony house work has helped to perpetuate the idea of homemaking as women's work thus reinforcing the stereotypical inequity between genders. However the decline in domestic servants would seem to imply greater equality between classes.

Unlike market labor, women are unpaid, work in isolated workplaces, and perform as unspecialized workers. The value of housework is difficult to quantify and critics argue that household's do not "produce" anything. But is not that the goal of industry; to produce a good or provide a service? Why does homemaking have to be seen in terms of output? What about family and childrearing? These are intangibles beyond monetary value.

11 people found this helpful

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