Household Administration, Its Place in the Higher Education of Women. Various
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The object of this book is threefold. (1) It endeavours to define the importance and scope of household administration in the twentieth century, which, when analysed into its component parts, is found intimately to concern the right conduct and domestic care of individual human lives, from their inception to their close. (2) It seeks to demonstrate the necessity of an adequate preparation for all who assume the responsibility of such administration; particularly for those who, in consequence of their parental responsibilities, their wealth, their social status, or their professional duties, exercise far-reaching influence through their standard of life and example. (3) Finally, it gives prominence to the fact that the domestic arts are no collection of empirical conventions, to be acquired by imitation or exercised by instinct. It is clearly demonstrated that the group of sciences upon which they rest is more comprehensive than most people suspect, and that their contribution to the solution of pressing domestic problems has so far been but partially realised. It is, therefore, of considerable interest to observe the remarkable consensus of opinion on each of these points among the recognised experts in their subjects, to whom were entrusted the preparation of the various sections of this book. The writers of the papers, untrammelled by editorial restrictions, each writing from the fulness of her knowledge, tested by ripe experience, reached independently conclusions conspicuous for their unanimity. It will be evident to the most casual reader that, in the opinion of these thoughtful women, blind instinct must yield place to trained intelligence, if home life is to be preserved and modern conditions of existence adequately adjusted to human requirements.
Progressive changes, social, commercial, industrial, and, last but not least, educational, now require that this trained intelligence be fostered by organised instruction outside the home, adapted to the needs, present or prospective, of girls in every grade of society. Such instruction, whether in the fundamental sciences or in the applied arts, must be associated with individual practice in laboratory, studio, workroom, and kitchen; the details to be varied as circumstances dictate.
If, however, consistent applications of such knowledge are to be made in order that desirable saving in time, labour, money, health, or happiness shall be effected, graduate women of high attainments are urgently needed for the work. It is they only who can bring to bear upon the problems of childhood and adolescence, of food, of clothing, of housing, of domestic economics, of occupation, rest, and recreation, the patient study and research in the interests of humanity, which men of similar standing have lavished upon the advancement of commerce and industrial processes. It is by their skilled labour in the almost untrodden field of domestic science that the millions of homes will benefit which are committed to the charge of women who possess neither time, opportunity, nor ability to carry out these indispensable investigations, but who can yet effectively fulfil their responsibilities, if they be supported by systematic training and organised common sense, based on sound knowledge.
It is in the hope of forwarding these objects that this book has been prepared.
ALICE RAVENHILL.
CATHERINE SCHIFF.
Nov. 1910.
A BRIEF HISTORICAL SKETCH OF WOMAN’S POSITION IN THE FAMILY
By CATHERINE SCHIFF
13
The home must always claim the first place in the large majority of women’s lives. It has done so in the past, it does so in the present, it will continue to do so in the future. But woman’s activities are no longer to be merely confined to her own fireside, though that must always hold a prominent place. The real problem of the day is the right conduct of the home on scientific lines.
In some ways the management of the home has never been more difficult. The servant problem has never been more acute than to-day; the cost of living and the standard of comfort is going up by leaps and bounds, and the old recipe of “Feed the brute,” as far as the husband is concerned, is no less inefficient. It is essential to-day to know something about food values, the arrangement of meals, which avoid monotony, and provide that requisite variety in nourishment, on which the good health and ultimately the good temper of the household depend.
Again we are realising the great complexities of all questions dealing with child-rearing and 14 education. We have travelled far from the self-complacency of the woman of thirty years ago, who based her claims to a thorough knowledge of the up-bringing of children on the fact that she had buried ten. This need for wider knowledge in all branches of housekeeping is equally important to the unmarried woman, who is more and more being called upon to act as a foster-mother, whether as a teacher or in some other capacity, to the nation’s children.
The care of the children is considered by all shades of opinion to be the clou of a woman’s life, and every day more and more responsibility is cast upon her in this respect. How can she, then, fulfil these duties as they should be fulfilled if she is utterly ignorant of the laws of health and of child-life, and how both are affected by environment and all the other grave and fundamental truths which lie at the root of the successful up-bringing and development of the child? It is now a hackneyed saying “that the child of to-day is the man or woman of to-morrow,” but a whole world of truth lies enshrined in those words; the children are the assets of the nation, and if their up-bringing is not of the best they can never attain to that full heritage of development which is the right of every soul born into the world.
Scientific training in Household Administration can alone save the sorely taxed housewife of to-day from becoming more than a slave to her domestic responsibilities. It is only by being a 15 mistress of her craft, “whether China fall or no,” that she can make sufficient time to devote herself to necessary self-culture and recreation as well as to those ever-growing outside duties which the twentieth century is imposing upon her in the shape of public and social work. If there is one thing which is becoming increasingly obvious, it is that the help and advice of scientifically trained women are absolutely necessary in the management of hospitals, the administration of the Poor Law, and the general solution of social problems.
At no other epoch in the history of mankind has woman stood on the same high plane as she does to-day, and at no other period has so much been demanded of her, intellectually, morally, and physically. It is only within recent years that Science has attempted to come to the aid of woman in helping her firstly to obtain, and then to maintain, the position for which she was originally designed, as the complement of man and as the chief element of preservation in human society.
If the history of mankind is traced back to primordial times, we find that it was the female who possessed power over the emotional nature of man, and it is becoming increasingly evident that the family owes its origin as a social factor to the Mother, not to the Father. Lippert is convinced “that the idea of an exclusively maternal kinship at one time extended over the whole earth,” and McLennan says, “We shall endeavour to show that the most ancient system in which the idea of 16 blood-relationship was embodied was a system of kinship through the females only.”
Occupation seems to have been the main factor in determining that the mother rather than the father should be the founder of the family. Agriculture originally appears to have been entirely the woman’s industry, while the men were engaged in hunting or looking after the cattle, and wherever agriculture was the predominant feature of life we find that relationship is traced through the mother; while on the other hand those tribes who were chiefly pastoral had a paternal system of relationship—that is to say, that descent was counted through the males.
Drummond, in his book on the “Ascent of Man,” places the Evolution of Motherhood long before that of Fatherhood. “An early result, partly of her sex, partly of her passive strain, is the founding through the instrumentality of the first savage Mother of a new and beautiful social state—Domesticity—while Man, restless, eager, and hungry, is a wanderer on the Earth, Woman makes a Home!” And according to the same authority