"By the late 1970's one-third of male high school graduates had some home-ec[onomics] training, whereas they comprised a mere 3.5 percent of home-ec students in 1962. Since then, 'home economics has moved from the mainstream to the margins of American high school,' according to the United States Department of Education, with even female participation - near universal in the 1950's - plummeting by 67 percent."

(Source: Jennifer Grossman, "Food for Thought (and for Credit), The New York Times, September 2, 2003; http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/02/opinion/02GROS.html.)

"Want to combat the epidemic of obesity? Bring back home economics. Before you choke on your 300-calorie, trans-fat-laden Krispy Kreme, consider: teaching basic nutrition and food preparation is a far less radical remedy than gastric bypass surgery or fast-food lawsuits. And probably far more effective...

Some detractors will doubtless smell a plot to turn women back into stitching, stirring Stepford Wives. Others will argue that schools should focus on the basics. But what could be more basic than life, food, home and hearth? A generation has grown up since we swept home ec into the dust heap of history and hung up our brooms. It's time to reevaluate the domestic discipline, and recapture lost skills"

(Source: Jennifer Grossman, "Food for Thought (and for Credit), The New York Times, September 2, 2003; http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/02/opinion/02GROS.html.)   

The quintessential television family of the 1950s-the Cleavers-ate at home. The quintessential television family of the 1990s-the Taylors-ate out. This difference in meal patterns separating the one-income families of the Fifties from the two-income families of the Nineties stands out in the findings of a comparative study of the two decades recently completed by economist Michael L. Walden of North Carolina State University. Metaphorically framing his analysis as a comparison of the Cleaver family of Leave It to Beaver with the Taylor family of Home Improvement, Walden set out to measure "real consumption quantities and budget shares" of single-earner households and dual-earner households in 1960 and in 1996.

Predictably enough, Walden found that in general "households with two earners consume more market goods and services than single-earner households." Walden does identify "exceptions, where single-earner households consume more than dual-earner households [in] food at home, shelter, [and] utilities." But these exceptions may actually evince single-earner strategies for reducing overall dependence on the market. As Walden acknowledges, single-earner households may spend more than two-earner households on food at home, shelter, and utilities because of "differences in household production....Single-earner households may engage in more household production than dual-earner households. Thus single-earner households prepare and consume more meals at home and utilize more space and utilities for their household production activities."

Apparently, one home-based activity has grown in recent decades in its relative importance in the single-income home. Walden highlights "the increased dissimilarity of real consumption of education between single-earner and dual-earner households in 1996 compared to 1960," with single-income households spending over 20% more on education in 1996 than dual-earner households. "Single-earner households," Walden suggests, "have more time to engage in educational activities, especially with children, than do dual-earner households, and this difference in time availability between single-earner and dual-earner households widened between 1960 and 1996."

So the up-to-date June Cleavers of America not only cook more meals for their families than their Jill Taylor counterparts, but also read more books to their children.