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FURTHER MECHANIZATION OF HOUSEWORK
This section is problem-initiated rather than idea initiated.
Therefore it is more tentative than sections based on solutions
looking for problems.
We start with the assertion that it is worthwhile to look for
technology that will allow the further mechanization of housework,
and we start that with a survey of where we were 100 years ago and
where we are today.
A hundred years ago, there were two kinds of households -
not counting the rich.
There were a certain number of nuclear families with a breadwinning
husband and a wife who did all housework and took care of the
children and no other working people in the house. This was possible
but very strenuous for the wife. Besides this, there were extended
households with several workers. These extra workers might include
grown or half grown children, girls who were "in service" as well as
male servants. I don't know the proportions of people who lived in
the various kinds of households. Today, many people deplore the
passing of the extended household. In accordance with a principle
discussed elsewhere in this book, I will attribute rationality to
people unless there is evidence to the contrary, and therefore we
conclude that the passing of the extended household is evidence that
it was disadvantageous to some people required to keep it going. It
is easy to guess who these people were.
In the first place, we have the people who would have had to
become servants in the older society, but who were able to become
factory workers in a more manufacturing-based society. I don't have
the statistics, but I would guess that the large families that some
people had were balanced by a large number of people who were never
in a position to have families at all. This is suggested by the
phrase "in a position to marry" which tells us that getting enough
money and a suitable job to be able to marry was not trivial and was
not always achieved. It would be interesting to know what percent of
the population ever got married at various times in nineteenth
century America and Europe.
In the second place, the extended family was normally very
hierarchical, and people who faced positions at the bottom of the
hierarchy preferred their own nuclear families to the positions they
could get in the extended families. The older generation was often
disappointed when the children moved out rather than taking their
places supporting the extended household. Perhaps, one might even
say that the main use to which Americans put the great increase in
productivity was in breaking up the extended household and allowing
everyone to form his own household on reaching maturity. This
process is still continuing. Children leave home at earlier ages in
increasing segments of the population. Even the tendency of students
to move out of dormitories and into their own apartments is a part of
this same tendency.
This breakup of extended households has been made possible by
two kinds of technological development. The first is a general
increase in wealth and the second is specifically domestic
technology. It seems that the first is probably the more important,
since it is quite feasible to have a nuclear family with very little
of the present domestic technology, but it is rather difficult
without money.
The increased general wealth has permitted the construction
of many more houses and apartments per capita than was previously
possible. Secondly, it has permitted a much less efficient use of
food than previously. Highly prepared foods are used, and the
inefficiency of preparing food for a small number of people is
tolerated. The transportation system can handle the increased
fraction of the population not working where they live.
The specifically domestic technology includes the following:
1. Central heating which eliminates chopping firewood,
bringing it in, and laying and feeding fires.
2. Running water which saves going to the well or pump.
3. Sewage connections which save building and moving
outhouses and saves emptying chamber pots. Maybe this is one of the
main reasons why it is possible to have reasonable luxury for some
without having a class of people who can be relegated to emptying
chamber pots and similar duties.
4. Refrigeration which permits shopping at longer intervals.
5. Electric lighting which eliminates some chores.
6. Automobiles which eliminate the work of taking care of
horses. Historically, horses were mostly used as transportation by
people who had other people to take care of them.
7. Washing machines and dryers. It is doubtful that these
reduce work much over that involved in using laundries. However,
they certainly make possible a less fixed schedule.
8. Dishwashing machines that lighten the load of doing
dishes.
The foregoing has dwelt solely on the labor-saving aspects of
domestic technology. The motivation for adopting this technology,
and its adoption consists mostly of a large number of individual and
family decisions to purchase one or another gadget or service, is not
solely to save labor. For example, refrigeration permits better
meals in many cases and not merely meals prepared with less labor.
Our use of these advantages to spread out into suburbs has
forced us to accept some other demands on our time. These include
1. Commuting longer average distances.
2. Longer distances to shopping than in old-fashioned cities.
3. The need for chauffering children.
Well, let's summarise where all these developments leave us.
The amount of work required to keep up a household is usually
to small to occupy the full attention of even one person except when
there is more than one small child in the house. However, it is
enough so that people generally live more comfortably when there is a
person whose main energies are devoted to keeping house. Moreover, a
certain fraction of women keeping house would rather be doing
something else. It is not clear how large this fraction is.
It may be possible by improved domestic technology to reduce
the work required to keep house to a trivial level. What is a
trivial level?