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● Early
Nineteenth Century
● Late
Nineteenth Century
● Early
Twentieth Century
● Mid-twentieth
Century
● Late
Twentieth Century
Mid-twentieth Century
 During
the economic depression of the 1930's, President Franklin D. Roosevelt
held Fireside Chats
in an effort to restore confidence in the economy and in the government.
During this time, many comedians became famous for their radio shows.
Sports heroes emerged mainly due to the exciting and colorful descriptions
broadcast by sports announcers. And the brief episodes
of drama shows held the interest and attention of housewives all
over America. These radio shows were called soap
operas because they advertised soap products aimed at
housewives, and the themes were usually sad and tragic.
There
was a counter-movement away from the city. The wealthier middle
class attempted to escape the dirty and crowded cities, to live
in a small town atmosphere away from the workplace. This out-migration
was facilitated by the availability of the inexpensive automobile,
made possible by Ford's assembly line technology (see above). People
would have moved to suburban locations in any event, yet the structure
and organization of these new communities would have been quite
different had the basic mode of transportation been the horse and
wagon supplemented by railroads and electric trolley cars. Furthermore,
such inventions as the electric starter motor, which replaced
the hand crank for starting automobile gasoline engines,
made it easier for women to drive, and thus housewives and mothers
could more easily travel farther away from their home to deal with
household necessities.
The
changes in household technologies spawned by such inventions
as the refrigerator (and then the freezer), home oil furnaces
instead of coal burning ones, automatic laundry machines, vacuum
cleaners, electric dishwashers, all should have led to an easier
life for the homemaker. These inventions as well as the newer ones
such as the microwave oven, the electric blender, the food processor,
and so on, should have freed housewives from tedious work and made
much more time available to her. Careful study shows however that
women today spend more time on household chores than in the past.
Men no longer chop wood or shovel coal for burning.
Men and children no longer wash dishes. Standards of cleanliness
have gone up, so that where one load of laundry a week was sufficient,
now several loads are needed to satisfy the new standards. Added
to this is the new role of mother as chauffeur, driving the
children to music teachers, dance lessons, sports activities, and
other typical middle-class activities for children.
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