Category: Arts & Humanities, Social sciences, Cornell University, United States

What is Home Economics? The term "home economics" may call up stereotypical images of girls busily sewing and cooking in 1950s classrooms, images that have led many people to view this field as fundamentally narrow, dull, and socially conservative. In the 1960s and 1970s, the women's movement was often critical of home economics, seeing it as a discipline that worked to restrict girls and women to traditional domestic and maternal roles.