---
title: "Home economics"
chunk: 4/5
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_economics"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:55:23.657157+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

Practice homes were added to American universities in the early 1900s in order to model a living situation, with the first facility built for home management practice constructed in the early 1920s at North Dakota Agricultural College. The all-women 'team' model used for students was different from prevailing expectations of housewives. For example, women were graded on collaboration, while households at the time assumed that women would be working independently. Nevertheless, the practice homes were valued. These practicum courses took place in a variety of environments including single-family homes, apartments, and student dorm-style blocks. For a duration of a number of weeks, students lived together while taking on different roles and responsibilities, such as cooking, cleaning, interior decoration, hosting, and budgeting. Some classes also involved caring for young infants, temporarily adopted from orphanages. Children's service organizations helped supply the babies who were awaiting adoption. At Cornell University, the first practice baby was called Dicky Domecon, named after the phrase "domestic economy". Dicky was borrowed by Cornell in 1920 when he was three weeks old. Practice babies belonged to the students and to the department and were considered central to the proper training and development of home economics students. Many fields of high acuity use simulation to enhance training in complicated situations. Childcare practicums were often included at the same time as other classwork, requiring students to configure their intellectual and home lives as compatible with one another. Home economics programs were using practice babies nationwide, however by 1959 less than one percent of programs still ran full-time operations. The practice was discontinued altogether by the early 1970s. According to Megan Elias, "in the ideal, domestic work was as important as work done outside the home and it was performed by teams of equals who rotated roles. Each member of the team was able to live a life outside the home as well as inside the home, ideally, one that both informed her domestic work and was informed by it. This balance between home and the wider world was basic to the movement."
There was a great need across the United States to continue improving the vocational and homemaking education systems because demand for work was apparent after World War I and II. Therefore, in 1914 and 1917, women's groups, political parties, and labor coalitions worked together in order to pass the Smith-Lever Act and the Smith-Hughes Act. The Smith-Lever Act of 1914 and the Smith-Hughes Act of 1917 created federal funds for "vocational education agriculture, trades and industry, and homemaking" and created the Office of Home Economics. With this funding, the United States was able to create more homemaking educational courses all across the country.
Throughout the 1940s, Iowa State College (later University) was the only program granting a Master of Science in household equipment. However, this program was centered on the ideals that women should acquire practical skills and a scientifically based understanding of how technology in the household works. For example, women were required to disassemble and then reassemble kitchen machinery so they could understand basic operations and understand how to repair the equipment. In doing so, Iowa State effectively created culturally acceptable forms of physics and engineering for women in an era when these pursuits were not generally accessible to them.
Throughout the latter part of the twentieth century, home economics courses became more inclusive. In 1963, Congress passed the Vocational Education Act, which granted funds to vocational education job training. Home economics courses started being taught across the nation to both boys and girls by way of the rise of second-wave feminism. This movement pushed for gender equality, leading to equality in education. Starting in 1994, home economics courses in the United States began being referred to as "family and consumer sciences" in order to make the class appear more inclusive. With desegregation and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, men and women of all backgrounds could equally learn how to sew, cook, and balance a checkbook.
In the 1980s, "domestic celebrities" rose to stardom. Celebrities, such as Martha Stewart, created television programs, books, magazines, and websites about homemaking and home economics, which attested to the continued importance of independent experts and commercial mass-media organizations in facilitating technological and cultural change in consumer products and services industries.
Despite many secondary education establishments still referring to these enrichment classes as "home economics", the name was officially changed in 1994 by the American Association of Family & Consumer Sciences to "family and consumer sciences" to more accurately represent the profession and field as a whole. As society changed over time, so did the needs of students in these classes. Topics such as nutrition, family finance, and other social justice issues have been added to family and consumer sciences classes, most frequently taught in high schools and colleges.