Are you a good homemaker, circa 1950

There's an antique store near my house that sells vintage magazines for $1 each. I picked up a 1950 issue of a magazine called Today's Woman last year; I think I was thinking it might be fun to do some artwork with the pictures. I still think it might be fun to do some artwork with the pictures, but every time I sit down to look at the pictures I get distracted by the articles, which are fascinating in their own right.

One article is a quiz to rate yourself as a homemaker. The quiz was apparently created by some home economists from a university. I actually sat down and took the quiz; I'll tell you my score after I post the quiz. It's a pretty long quiz, so I will probably give my commentary in a separate post.

I'll tell you now that I was expecting something that would fulfill all my stereotypes of the 1950s, even though I really ought to know better, and this definitely did not.

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Things that surprised me about the 1950s "How Good of a Homemaker are You" quiz

First, I had expected this quiz to include a cleaning checklist with questions like,

Do you change the sheets on the beds
- Daily (5 points)
- Twice a week (3 points)
- Weekly (1 point)

(I read The Feminine Mystique once and I remember specifically the author talking about how housewives had been brainwashed into believing that sheets had to be changed daily.)

Actually, nowhere in the entire quiz is there any sort of checklist of specific cleaning duties. The assumption here is that you know what you're supposed to be getting done; the only question is, are you getting it done? Yes, 6 points. Mostly, 4 points. Not really, 2 points. The quiz also assumes that families eat together; you get points for doing things as a family, but the quiz explicitly excludes meals from that. And of course the quiz assumes that you cook your meals, even if you're inefficient and don't plan ahead.

I find it hilariously funny that the balanced homemaker gets extra points for taking a daily nap. I actually had an older history professor in college (Professor Eleanor Zelliot) who insisted that there had to be a couch available somewhere in a ladies' room in the building because "you will get far more work out of women if you have a place for them to go lie down for a bit if they need to." She's in her 80s now, and allegedly retired a few years ago, though last I heard she was still hanging around the college.

Another thing that struck me as interesting was the blend of things that were extraordinarily dated, and the things that were actually still a good idea and could go nearly intact into a modern quiz like this. If a home economics professor (or "human ecology," if that's what they're calling it now) wrote a self-evaluation quiz for the homemaker of 2005, question IIF ("If your family keeps financial records, what form is used?") would still be an excellent one; of course, answer 1 would be "Online program such as Quicken or Microsoft Money." Does your family plan to save money? Do they succeed in saving money? Do you do things together as a family? Do you see a dentist and a doctor regularly for routine checkups? These are still good questions.

On the other hand, Do you sew all clothes but men's and boys' outerwear? I know people who sew, but it's a hobby, and in most cases they don't really save any money. Canning? Again, I know people who do it, but it's not as if canned goods are particularly expensive.

A contemporary quiz would have quite a bit more related to the raising of children. It's not like anyone even uses the term "homemaker" anymore -- you're a "stay-at-home mother." I have occasionally referred to myself as a housewife, but it's all about the shock value. (Especially as, as this quiz demonstrates, I make a lousy housewife.)

The final thing that struck me was the egalitarianism about the money management. It's supposed to be a full-family affair, not the breadwinner ruling by fiat.

I realized at some point after taking the quiz that there was something familiar about the name and logo of the magazine. I looked on my cookbook shelf, and sure enough: my pie cookbook is the Today's Woman Best Pie Cookbook. It's an excellent pie cookbook, FYI -- nice illustrated instructions for pie dough, and lots of tasty ideas for pies. Pie-making is one homemaker skill I've enthusiastically embraced. Frankly, I think it's probably gotten me further than the ability to mend household textiles.

Anyway, the 1950s were actually not at all like most people (especially those who harken back to the Good Old Days) imagine. My maternal grandmother ran an in-home day care in Lynchburg, Virginia in the early 1950s, to make money while my grandfather attended college. It served a mix of families, including several single parents and several two-income families. My mother told me a hilarious story sometime back about this little boy at my grandmother's day care whose parents both worked at the local college. He came in one day with a song to share, and proceeded to sing "Allah loves me, this I know, 'cause the Koran tells me so" to the tune of Jesus Loves Me. My grandmother refered to him as "the little Muhammedan boy" from then on out. (His parents apparently taught him the song after he came home singing a song about Jesus that he'd learned at my grandmother's day care.) Anyway, this is not a story of the 1950s that fits into anything you'd hear from the "let's turn back the clock" contingent, and my grandmother's 1950s America was every bit as legitimate as their 1950s America. More, in fact, because hers really existed.