Between 1900 and 1930, a major revolution in social and technological tools with which housework was done took place. Examining business statistics, demographic information, and advertising in women’s magazines, this chapter analyzes how the “industrial revolution” in the home and the modernization of household technology led to a new genre of middle-class housewife—one who no longer served as a manager of servants but who performed the servant’s tasks herself. The chapter points to the role of advertising as a mediating agent in this process, as women were both encouraged to embrace their new role and chastised for shortcomings that, as advertisers stated, could be overcome through consumption of the advertised products.
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Ruth Schwartz Cowan (2018) studied this question.