Food, clothing, and health care systems do fit the “production to consumption” model. By the beginning of the twentieth century, the purchasing of processed foods and readymade clothes instead of home production was becoming common. Somewhat later, the health care system also moved into centralized institutions, and these trends continued with increasing momentum during the first half of the last century.
The transportation system and its relation to changing consumption patterns, however, exemplified the shift in the other direction. During the nineteenth century, household goods were often delivered, mailorder catalogs were widespread, and most people did not spend much time buying goods. With the advent of the motor car after the First World War, all this began to change. By 1930, the automobile had become the prime mode of transportation in the United States. Delivery services of all kinds began to disappear and the burden of providing transportation shifted from the seller to the buyer.6 Meanwhile, women gradually replaced men as the drivers of transport, more and more business converted to the “self-service” concept, and households became increasingly dependent on housewives to provide the service. The time spent on shopping tasks expanded until today the average time spent is eight hours per week, the equivalent to an entire working day.7
In this way, households moved from the net consumption to the net production of transportation services, and housewives became the transporters of purchased goods rather than the receivers of them. The purchasing of goods provides a classic example of a task that is generally either ignored altogether or considered as ‘not work’, in spite of the time, energy and skill required, and its essential role in the national economy.
The last four technological systems—water, gas, electricity, and petroleum—also reorganized housework, yet their impact was ambiguous. On the one hand, they radically increased the productivity of housewives. “Modern technology enabled the American housewife of 1950 to produce singlehandedly what her counterpart of 1850 needed a staf of three or four to produce; a middle-class standard of health and cleanliness.”8 On the other hand, while eliminating much drudgery, modern labor-saving devices did not reduce the necessity for time-consuming labor. Thus there is no simple cause-and-efect relation between the mechanization of homes and changes in the volume and nature of household work.
Chapter five
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