In her book More Work for Mother, Ruth Schwartz Cowan argues that the industrial revolution produced a variety of appliances marketed to make housewifery easier, actually made more work for wives and mothers since the appliances, in reality only could do the jobs previously allocated to children, men, and servants. However, since these appliances were marketed to make life easier, societal expectations for housewifery increased so that women were allocated even more work. One example of this is how cooking has changed, before the development of appliances average diets were basic and consistent of only a few items that were available from local crops. But after the development of modern appliances average diets diversified and expectations for women to curate menus arose, especially the modern
stove and refrigeration.
The example of changing diets that Cowan uses is the invention of a new type of
flour, which could be used to make finer cakes and brought about the expectation of
housewives baking fresh bread, pies, cakes, and other goods for their families every week. Not complying with this expectation would often lead to women being marked a bad wife or an unfit mother.
Similar to how she goes through changing diets in More Work for Mother, Cowan
also meticulously explains how each part of “housewifery” changed with the industrial
revolution, including the development of economic specializations outside of the home,
utilities, and basic appliances such as the stove, microwave, and oven. Specifically, Cowen discusses how the development of coal and gas stoves actually hurt women as the wooden cook strategies, where a man brought them wood, produced a smoke that was less harmful to women and cleaner.
Cowan goes pretty far back into the 19th century which gives the reader an in-depth
background of what home life was like leading up to the industrial revolution and sets up a narrative for the reader to follow. In doing this Cowan explains that in early years gender roles were split so that the women were brought everything they needed for cooking and cleaning straight to the house, however as automated appliances were invented simplified and completed roles previously assigned men and children.
As she gets into the historical narrative of the industrial revolution, Cowen begins to
explore the question of how gender roles define day to day life. On page twenty-six, Cowen says “under duress, of course, people were capable of breaking out of their stereotypical roles” to show that while both men and women are competent in each other’s roles, they will not venture out of their own roles unless they are forced to. The social phenomena can be seen throughout history in wars when women left the home to work in factories while the men went to war, as well as in times of progress such as when women began working outside of the house.
Cowen wrote More Work for Mother in the early ’80s has become outdated over the
past thirty to forty years, however reading this book now raises a lot of questions such as have we come full circle in terms of housewifery? Today, while it is not always the woman in a household, who does the housework, whomever does can order any good from groceries to cleaning supplies to toys from the comfort of their home and have it delivered to their doorstep via services like Peapod, Amazon, and Postmates. Again, these services are replacing jobs that back in the day that men and children would have stereotypically done, but, as a society, we are moving past the period of “housewifery” meaning you have to go out and get everything and therefore back to a time of less work in the department of housewifery.
When reading this book now, it is difficult to understand Cowan’s arguments because
of how people generally live today, as previously stated we do not tend to go out and buy each good needed for house work individually. However, as she progresses into her
historical narrative and Cowan builds up to the meat of her argument the reader gets a better sense of the time that More Work for Mother was written in. Once the reader grasps where Cowan is coming from her argument really starts to resonate with the reader since she backs up her claims with distinct developments in technology and social behavior. In conclusion, this is a very well written and convincing book and really shows that Cowan has done her due diligence investigating how times have changed and why.