Family and relationships
Ruth Schwartz Cowan
Household technology
Ruth Schwartz Cowan (United States · 1941-) — Household technology.
What actually happened?
In 1987 she wrote an essay for American Heritage called 'Less Work for Mother?'. Partway through she recorded what happened while she was writing it. She was interrupted five times: to take a child to field hockey practice, then to bring her back, to pick up groceries at the supermarket, to retrieve her husband stranded at the train station, and for a trip to a doctor's office. Each time, she wrote, she was doing housework, and each time she had to use her car. We do not think of cars as household appliances. She argued that is exactly what they are.
Ask whose effort it saved
Every labour-saving thing that enters a house deserves one question: before it came, who did this? Her answer kept repeating. The share removed was the husband's, the children's, the maid's, the delivery man's. The share left over did not shrink; it became one person's.
The robot vacuum arrives, and the family that used to clean together on Saturdays goes back to their rooms.
Saved effort, eaten by standards
The washing machine made laundry lighter, so laundry was done more often: whole shirts instead of detachable collars, both sheets changed, clean underwear daily. By the 1980s a housewife washed about ten times her mother's load by weight, in no less time.
A slide takes five minutes instead of an hour, so every review now needs fifty of them.
The car is an appliance
The iceman, the milkman, the grocer, the seamstress and the doctor used to come to the door. Once she drove, businesses and doctors found it paid not to, and her work gained a new line: chauffeur. The road became a full working day a week.
'Click and collect' and 'self-service online': the journey you no longer pay for is the one you now make.
How do I use it today?
If every machine is in your house and you are still the busiest person in it, do one thing today. List each labour-saving machine you own, and next to it write who did that job before it arrived. Some lines will name other people: a relative who used to help, a shop that used to deliver, someone who used to do the washing-up without being asked. Those lines are what the machines really replaced. Then add a second note to each line: who set today's standard for this job, and how much higher is it than ten years ago? With that list on the table the conversation is no longer 'could you help me more', but how many people this work was meant for, and whether the standard needs to be this high.
Deep read
Read alongside
Further
Lines to keep
Drudgery had disappeared, but the laundry hadn't.
The machine did not remove the work. It removed the helpers.