The Secret History of Home Economics
The Secret History of Home Economics: How Trailblazing Women Harnessed the Power of Home and Changed the Way We Live is a 2021 nonfiction book by journalist Danielle Dreilinger. The book explores how different areas of skills, knowledge, and investigation were brought together under the umbrella of "home economics", and how the field's focus and reputation have changed over the decades in the United States. Summary In The Secret History of Home Economics, Dreilinger, education reporter for The Times-Picayune for five years, examines how the focus of home economics swung back and forth between being a method for women to obtain scientific education to vocational training for future wives and mothers. With the expansion of colleges after the Civil War and particularly the land-grant universities which were coed, leaders in education favored curricula focused on vocational education. "Domestic science" courses were offered for women at a number of schools during the latter half of the 19th century. This approach was fiercely debated; the president of Bryn Mawr College argued that domestic science would not nurture intellectual growth, and there were concerns among Black communities that domestic science was too much like the manual labor expected under slavery. At Tuskegee University,