Stuff You Should Know – “What We Lost When We Lost Home Ec”

Hosts: Josh Clark & Chuck Bryant
Date: December 30, 2025
Podcast: iHeartPodcasts

Overview

In this episode, Josh and Chuck take a wide-ranging, often humorous look at the rise, significance, and decline of Home Economics (“Home Ec”) education in America. They explore its surprisingly feminist origins, its crucial role in shaping American households and consumer culture, and what’s been lost as budget cuts and standardized testing have squeezed it out of schools. They also consider the consequences for today’s youth—and society at large—when basic life skills are no longer taught in class.

Main Points and Insights

1. Personal Home Ec Memories & Cultural Context

• Josh and Chuck’s Experiences:
  Both hosts recall taking Home Ec in school. Chuck admits he likely took the class because it was an easy elective with “cute girls,” while Josh has only vague recollections—possibly mixed up with an episode of Saved by the Bell.

  • “I remember the room and everything, but I don’t remember anything I did.” – Josh (03:07)

• Home Ec’s Changing Presence in Schools:
  By the late 1980s/early 1990s, Home Ec was already fading from many schools.

  • “We were among the last age group who could elect for Home Ec pretty much across the country.” – Josh (03:52)

2. What Is (and Was) Home Ec?

• Definition and International Terms:
  Home Ec = “Home Economics,” also called “food sciences” in the UK and Canada (05:50).

• Scope:
  Traditionally covered cooking, sewing, childcare, balancing checkbooks, basic life and financial skills.

• Feminist Roots & Early Intent:
  Despite stereotypes, Home Ec began as a feminist movement, aiming to formalize women’s work as both scientifically valid and economically important:

  • “Home Ec… developed from something radical, the idea that the traditional work of women is important, meaningful, and… economically significant.” – Nancy Darling (cited by Josh, 10:48)

3. Historical Background: Rise of Home Ec

• 19th Century Challenges:
  Women managed huge workloads on farms, lacking formal instruction or resources.

• Societal Shifts:
  Rising literacy rates, industrialization, and migration to cities led to a breakdown in intergenerational “household knowledge.”

• The Morrill Act of 1862:
  Land-grant colleges began admitting women and teaching scientific home management, laying the groundwork for Home Ec (09:25).

• Key Figure: Ellen Swallow Richards

  • First woman to attend/instruct at MIT, pioneered sanitary chemistry labs, championed the economic and scientific value of housework (11:28).
  • “As long as there was enough of a whiff of ‘women’s work,’ academia could put up with it.” – Josh (12:20)

• Lake Placid Conferences & Birth of “Home Economics”:
  Conferences at the turn of the century settled the name and promoted “domestic work” as valid, important economic activity (13:33).

  • “[The term] Home Economics… to basically point out that domestic work was a huge part of economics.” – Josh (13:33)
  • The word “economics” originates from the Greek “oikonomia”—household management (15:12).

4. Home Ec’s Golden Age: Science, Media & Industry Ties

• Expansion and Institutionalization:
  The USDA formed the Bureau of Home Economics (1920s). It hired women scientists and set national standards in nutrition, food safety, military/school lunches, and clothing care (19:16).

• Mass Culture:
  Home Ec went mainstream via radio shows ("Housekeeper’s Chat" with “Aunt Sammy”), and companies like General Mills and Campbell’s employed home economists to invent now-iconic recipes (20:43, 22:19).

  • “That’s where American food as we think of it today was founded…bland, Midwestern, American food took over.” – Josh (20:02)

• Economic and Social Impact:
  The poverty line calculation, astronaut food, even products like Chex Mix, Rice Krispie Treats, and green bean casserole were all Home Ec-influenced (21:28, 23:08).

• Notable Quote:

  • “If you love Rice Krispie treats, you can thank the home economics program…” – Chuck (23:08)

5. Home Ec in the Classroom: Practical Skills and Social Engineering

• Simulated Life Lessons:
  Students cooked in fully-equipped classrooms, learned to sew, and sometimes cared for “egg babies” or even real infants borrowed from orphanages to practice parenting (25:33, 26:25).
  • “For adoptive parents…they’d show up and be like: ‘You got any one of them babies that’s been in the home economic classes?’” – Josh (26:50)
• Social Aims:
  The infamous “egg baby” projects and later robotic infants (“Baby, Think It Over”) were meant not just to teach childcare, but to discourage teen pregnancy (28:05).

6. The Decline: Why Home Ec Faded

• Transition to Testing & College Prep:
  The pivot to standardized testing, spurred on by No Child Left Behind, crowded out electives like Home Ec (32:02).

  • “If there aren’t any Home Ec questions on these tests…and the testing is tied to funding, then what’s the point of even teaching that stuff?” – Chuck (32:19)

• Feminist Critique and Stereotypes:
  Second-wave feminism (cf. Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique) painted Home Ec as symbolic of oppressive gender roles (34:03).

• Loss of Funding:
  The Vocational Education Acts of 1963 and Reagan-era policies shifted education priorities to job training and college prep (32:42).

• Rebranding Attempts:
  In the 1990s, Home Ec became "Family and Consumer Sciences," focusing more on careers, but struggled to find qualified teachers and saw ongoing enrollment drops (35:03, 36:49).

7. What Did We Lose? Consequences of The Decline

• Life Skills Gap:
  Many young adults lack basic financial literacy, cooking, and home management know-how. Recent studies confirm poor US financial literacy and a generational decline in skills (37:56).

  • “The majority of Americans can’t pass a test of financial literacy.” (citing World Economic Forum, 2024) – Chuck (37:56)

• Health Impacts:
  Some link today’s obesity epidemic to a loss of cooking skills and reliance on processed/prepared foods (39:48).

• Chores and “Adulting” Deficit:
  Survey: 82% of parents did chores as kids, but only 28% require their children to do chores now (40:37).

  • “We now have generations coming up that don’t know how to adult properly.” – Chuck (39:48)

• Intergenerational Patterns:
  Both hosts reflect on the challenges of making kids do chores, despite recognizing their value (40:45).

• Economic Stress:
  Easy access to delivery and apps isn’t a real solution given stagnating wages and rising debt—$1.21 trillion US credit card debt as of Q2 2025 (41:30).

8. Is Home Ec Obsolete? Arguments For and Against Revival

• Technology as a Substitute:
  Apps and YouTube can teach everything, but classroom learning has unique value (42:36).
  • “It's also good to learn that in a classroom setting, you know?” – Chuck (43:02)
• Do We Still Need Vocational Ed?
  With AI, skilled trades (plumbing, electrical) may become even more valuable—echoed by Nvidia’s CEO (43:02).
• Avoiding “Back in My Day” Thinking:
  • “You just have to be careful not to slip into the ‘back in my day, things were better’ mentality.” – Josh (44:06)
  • “We do things differently now and we don’t have to do it the way you did it.” – Chuck (44:23)

Notable Quotes & Moments

• On the fading of Home Ec:
  “It wasn’t like a faucet got turned off or a light switch was turned…It started to go downhill pretty fast in about the early ‘60s.” – Josh (31:26)
• On vocational skills:
  “I knew a couple of kids who were like, I’m going to be a mechanic...It would give them a huge leg up.” – Josh (35:03)
• On the evolution of the field:
  “Family and Consumer Sciences is new, it’s fresh, it’s 90s.” – Josh (35:23)
• On self-sufficiency today:
  "If you can’t cook, it doesn’t matter, get DoorDash…but you just have to give them money, and it’s that ‘give them money’ thing that’s kind of a problem.” – Josh (41:30)
• On changing times:
  "How’d you learn to steam a shirt? ... TikTok, bruh. Get out of my face." – Chuck (44:06)

Key Timestamps

• 02:12–03:52: Josh & Chuck reminisce on their own Home Ec experiences.
• 05:44–11:28: History of Home Ec, feminist origins.
• 13:33–15:14: Lake Placid Conferences and naming the field.
• 19:16–24:12: USDA’s Bureau of Home Economics, mass media, and industry involvement.
• 25:33–28:32: In-class parenting simulations (“egg babies”, real infants) and motivations.
• 32:02–36:49: Decline of Home Ec, policy changes, attempts at reinvention.
• 37:56–41:30: Skills gap, financial literacy, chores, and modern “adulting.”
• 42:36–44:36: Debate: Is Home Ec still needed, or have times changed?

Tone & Style

Josh and Chuck keep things lighthearted, witty, and self-aware, blending humor (“sometimes you just gotta live with the sounds of life”) with genuine curiosity and critical reflection.

Summary Takeaways

Home Ec was much more than cooking and sewing: it created new opportunities for women, shaped American food and family culture, and trained generations in financial and life skills. Its decline reflects broader educational and societal shifts—with consequences still playing out. Whether those skills should return to the classroom, or are best learned elsewhere in the 21st century, remains an open question. As Chuck puts it:

“We do things differently now and we don’t have to do it the way you did it.” (44:23)