Author visits Little Rock to discuss 'The Secret History of Home Economics'
By Rebekah Hall
U of A System Division of Agriculture
March 8, 2024
Fast Facts:
- Author Danielle Dreilinger discussed history of extension home demonstration agents in Arkansas
- Event hosted by Women’s Foundation of Arkansas, Central Arkansas Library Museum and ESSE Purse Museum
- Book examines history of home economics field and its women leaders, including roots in land-grant institutions
(967 words)
(Newsrooms: With art)
LITTLE ROCK — As with so many things in life, the history of homemaking in this country is not as simple as it seems.
Danielle Dreilinger, a North Carolina-based journalist, has put years of research into illuminating that complex history.
Dreilinger recently spoke about her book, “The Secret History of Home Economics: How Trailblazing Women Harnessed the Power of Home and Changed the Way We Live,” to an audience in Little Rock. Dreilinger said extension home demonstration agents were some of the early teachers of home economics, traveling to rural areas to share best practices with farm families.
“Home demonstration was the term that the extension service used for years for its home economics program,” Dreilinger said. “The idea was that you would have professionals who were trained to share the latest, greatest information for helping farms and farm homes in mostly rural communities. They were extending out the work.”
Dreilinger’s presentation was part of a discussion hosted by the Women’s Foundation of Arkansas, the Central Arkansas Library System and ESSE Purse Museum.
Though people today may primarily associate the field of home economics with high school cooking classes, Dreilinger said its founding began with women who wanted to improve the quality of their lives and communities.
“It can sound very down-home and homespun, but all of these deep, saving-the-world impulses were very much the activating force for home demonstration agents,” she said. “They thought it was crucial for health. People were going to learn about better nutrition, learn to grow things that were more nutritious, and fix up their homes so that they were more health-producing. It was very empowering. What can you do to make your life better, even under really difficult circumstances?”
Dreilinger said the field was “very much about thrift — doing more with less — and very much about economic development.”
“There’s a photo in one of the Arkansas archives that showed a woman who had been helped to buy a drink cooler for her corner store so she could sell cold drinks,” Dreilinger said. “That alone made her income rise. There were small business opportunities and self-esteem to be found.”
As part of her discussion, Dreilinger also noted the racist history of the home economics field, which was segregated until the 1960s. In her research about the history of home economics in Arkansas, Dreilinger said the work of Cherisse Jones-Branch, graduate school dean and professor of history for Arkansas State University, provided critical context.
“The work of Dr. Cherisse Jones-Branch has just been crucial in Black Arkansas home demonstration,” Dreilinger said. “She made the point that it was very much political work. It was about uplift and advocacy and activism…These women were getting together, and they could talk about things like how to fight the poll tax, and they could join the NAACP. Some of them were doing political organizing as well.”
Dreilinger said the first Black woman to be hired as a home demonstration agent in Arkansas was Mary Lee McCrary Ray, who became the head of Black home demonstration in Arkansas for many years.
“Unsurprisingly, Black extension was underfunded compared to White extension,” she said. “These women became even more powerful and influential in their communities than White home demonstration agents because there were fewer of them.”
Dreilinger highlighted other significant figures in Arkansas home economics history, including Betty Oliver. Oliver began working with extension as an assistant home demonstration agent in Miller County in 1958, and she became the longest-serving University of Arkansas system employee, with 48 years of service.
Future of the field
Brittney Schrick, extension associate professor and family life specialist for the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture, attended the discussion and asked Dreilinger about her thoughts on how home economics — now called family and consumer sciences — has become less multi-disciplinary over time.
“What I’ve noticed across the extension system around the country is that a lot of extension family and consumer sciences departments have gone to only nutrition and health,” Schrick said. “I’m the family life specialist for Arkansas, so I cover childcare, marriage and parenting and things like that. We have resource management, and our family and consumer sciences agents out in the county still teach canning workshops.
“Arkansas, so far, has been very thoughtful in making sure that we retain all of those pieces of the system, where in other places, they’re kind of having to follow the money, where grant funding takes them to public health and nutrition,” Schrick said. “I think that has filtered down into the k-12 system, where they’ve parsed out family and consumer sciences into health class and nutrition science. If you want to take a traditional home economics course that’s more broadly based, a lot of those don’t exist anymore. Did you see any of that in your research?”
Dreilinger thanked Schrick for her work and agreed that the nutrition, dietetics and public health elements are more prominent.
“To be sure, that was always a dominant piece of home economics from the start,” Dreilinger said. She said that when she began her research, she questioned the importance of “whether a nutrition department is in a home economics program versus a public health program or medical program?”
“What people pointed out to me is that one of the strengths of home economics has always been that it was multidisciplinary,” she said. “Even if you were going to specialize in nutrition, you also had this broader point of view that hopefully made your work more effective.”
For more information about Dreilinger’s book ‘The Secret History of Home Economics: How Trailblazing women Harnessed the Power of Home and Changed the Way We Live,’ visit the book’s page on the W. W. Norton website. To learn more about the Cooperative Extension Service’s Family and Consumer Sciences department or contact your local agent, visit uaex.uada.edu/life-skills-wellness/.
To learn about extension programs in Arkansas, contact your local Cooperative Extension Service agent or visit www.uaex.uada.edu. Follow us on X and Instagram at @AR_Extension. To learn more about Division of Agriculture research, visit the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station website: https://aaes.uada.edu. Follow on X at @ArkAgResearch. To learn more about the Division of Agriculture, visit https://uada.edu/. Follow us on X at @AgInArk.
About the Division of Agriculture
The University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture’s mission is to strengthen agriculture, communities, and families by connecting trusted research to the adoption of best practices. Through the Agricultural Experiment Station and the Cooperative Extension Service, the Division of Agriculture conducts research and extension work within the nation’s historic land grant education system.
The Division of Agriculture is one of 20 entities within the University of Arkansas System. It has offices in all 75 counties in Arkansas and faculty on five system campuses.
The University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture offers all its Extension and Research programs to all eligible persons without regard to race, color, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, religion, age, disability, marital or veteran status, genetic information, or any other legally protected status, and is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer.
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Media Contact:
Rebekah Hall
rkhall@uada.edu
@RKHall_
501-671-2061