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All but the kitchen sink

On the significance of domestic science and the silence of social theory KERREEN REIGER Sociology Department, Phillip Institute o f Technology, Australia

In Australia, as in other western countries in the early decades o f the twentieth century, a series o f attempts were made to modernize or reform domestic living patterns and family relationships along "scientific" lines. Close attention to the origin, course, and significance o f movements such as the introduction o f domestic science training and infant welfare supervision can make an i m p o r t a n t contribution to social theory. I argue that the attempt to extend technical rationality to the household in the f o r m o f "'scientific" principles o f thought and action has produced a structural contradiction in m o d e r n societies. Although Weber and the critical theory tradition have developed a substantial critique o f technical rationality as not really "reasonable" at all, and feminist theorists have debated the relation between capitalist exploitation and the oppression o f women, the implications o f extending instrumental reason to the sphere o f women and the h o m e have not been adequately explored. Australian historical evidence, like that from other industrial capitalist societies, indicates that m a n y members o f the new professional middle class participated in a c o m m o n project. 1 Their goal was to reshape reproductive and childrearing practices and the m a n a g e m e n t of the household in the light o f what they saw as the needs o f a m o d e r n society. However their strategies and interpretation o f the family as a set o f manipulable social practices contradicted the d o m i n a n t bourgeois emphasis on personal life as private, as a refuge o f warmth and emotional intimacy, and on the family as primarily a natural entity centered on women's "femininity." ~i'he professionals or "experts" who intervened in the supposedly private sphere were often working in programs supported by bourgeois philanthropists and charity workers, especially women. I argue though that the thrust and implications o f their enterprise diverged markedly. Other writers have emphasized the imposition o f Theory and Society 16." 4 9 7 - 5 2 6 (1987) ,~, Martinus N i j h o f f Publishers, Dordreeht - Printed in the Netherlands

498 bourgeois familial ideals on the industrial working class. 2 Australian sources show a rather more complex picture; the experts were engaged on a still more ambitious project, the remaking even of bourgeois or "middle class" homes. The difference between the perspective of bourgeois reformers and that of professionals is of greater significance than has so far been recognized. My argument is that it suggests a less than perfect fit between the social arrangements emerging under capitalism and those of patriarchal social orders than has usually been supposed. Whereas much feminist theory has presented a fairly depressing picture of the interpenetration of patriarchy and capitalism, 3 this is not the whole story. Certainly it has been convincingly demonstrated that class and gender are closely interlocked forms of oppression in modern societies, but my evidence indicates that they are not altogether harmonious. Here I identify a central contradiction between the technical rationality characteristic o f industrial capitalism and the longstanding assumptions about women as more "natural," less "cultural" than men that have underpinned patriarchal societies.

Interpreting the nexus: family patterns, class, and cultural change Although the historical specificity of particular societies is important, there have been many similarities in the development of western societies. The Australian developments described below were not unique. As they reflected similar movements in North America, Britain, and parts of Western Europe, they can be interpreted in a wider context. In turn, examination o f the Australian material contributes to more general theoretical analysis. Several areas of debate are germane to my argument, in particular those on the nature and significance of changes in " m o d e r n " family patterns and their relation to changes in the class structure and cultural framework of industrial capitalist societies. Unfortunately, many o f these debates have not made gender dynamics central to the analysis. And, furthermore, feminists have only recently begun to engage with some o f the related theoretical controversies such as those on the role o f the new middle class and the critique of technical rationality. 4 A major goal o f this article is to demonstrate the need for, and suggest the direction of, a more comprehensive account of the relation between "public" and "private" life. The final section therefore seeks to extend critical theory's analysis of instrumental reason in the light of feminist analysis of gender. By the late nineteenth century the material context of the household was assuming its essential twentieth-century features; the replacement of

499 p r o d u c t i o n centered in the h o m e by that o f industrial manufacture, the growth o f suburbia and the introduction o f technology into the domestic sphere. Demographic change - increased life expectancy and fewer children - was altering the shape and dynamics o f the family itself. The growth o f the state and o f voluntary organizations increasingly impinged on the everyday life o f household members. Historians and sociologists have interpreted the emergence o f m o d e r n family forms in a variety o f ways. Those working within a broadly Weberian framework have stressed the " m o d e r n " attitudes produced by "middle-class" families, especially individualism, and been generally positive in their assessment o f the direction o f social and family change. 5 Others, working from a Marxist or more critical Weberian perspective have analyzed the establishment o f a dominant family form, that o f the bourgeoisie, which they see as a crucial factor in the reproduction o f capitalist social relations. 6 F r a n k f u r t school theorists, however, have emphasized the contradictory nature o f the family model that has become characteristic o f western societies. Agreeing that the " m o d e r n " family's emotional or psychic structure is its distinctive feature, they have argued that the family has been "shot t h r o u g h " with "antagonisms" since the beginning o f bourgeois society. 7 T h e y stressed the structuring o f personality in the bourgeois family, suggesting that its nuclear structure, privatization, and intense relationships produced an a u t o n o m o u s individual suited to the competitive rigors o f entrepreneurial capitalism. As some feminists have pointed out, 8 H o r k h e i m e r and others in the critical t h e o r y tradition have tended to m o u r n the decline o f the bourgeois family during the twentieth century in spite o f recognizing that it involved sexual repression and ongoing exploitation o f women. The development o f advanced capitalism since the late nineteenth century, with its growing emphasis on c o n s u m p t i o n and hence development o f mass media and o f advertising, has been linked by critical theorists to changes in family dynamics and personality structure. Their fear has been that the potential " e m a n c i p a t o r y mom e n t " o f the bourgeois family, which derived from the strength of personality structure it produced, was in danger o f being lost: its disintegration by no means has solely the positive aspects of liberation.... Even if the repressivetraits of the bourgeois family may be growing milder, this does not necessarily mean that freer, less authoritarian forms are taking their place. Like every proper ideology, the family too was more than a mere lie.9 However, changes in the labor force since the nineteenth century have eroded the economic base o f the father's authority with grave consequence for the f o r m a t i o n o f personality in the family.

500 The concern o f critical theorists has been then that under advanced capitalism the demise o f paternal authority allows the p r o d u c t i o n o f weaker egos that are less able to resist external authority. This fear is related to that o f the potential totalitarianism o f m o d e r n industrial societies, insofar as the mass media, peer group, and the State supplant the father's authority role, individuals are less resistant to manipulation and exploitation. 1~ Yet, although the Freudian underpinnings o f the Frankfurt school produced this preoccupation with paternal authority, Horkheimer recognized that it was actually the mother's childrearing role that was being increasingly instrumentalized by professionals or experts. 11 As Jessica Benjamin too has argued, 12 this process has been o f greater significance than H o r k h e i m e r allowed. It has been members o f the new middle class, especially those in the "helping" or " h u m a n service" professions who have played the leading role in a conscious assault on the family as an "anachronistic" or "natural" institution. They have attempted to bring familial behavior into line with the norms o f calculative exchange characteristic o f the wider society. W h e t h e r they are a "class" in the standard Marxist sense o f sharing a similar relation to the means o f production, or only a " f r a c t i o n " o f the ruling class, the bourgeoisie, is still a matter o f lively controversy, but the rise o f the "experts" is generally accepted to be a m a j o r feature o f m o d e r n societies.~3 As an emerging group in the class structure o f advanced societies, the professionals and managers have been variously termed the "new petty bourgeoisie," "the professional-managerial class," and the "new class. ''14 Interpretations o f their position have been quite diverse: some writers insist they are fundamentally aligned with the working class; others that they are "lackeys" o f capital; and others that they inhabit a " c o n t r a d i c t o r y " location. 15 A more promising approach can be developed that breaks through some o f these often tedious debates. Giddens distinguishes between what he calls allocative and authoritative resources in society. H e argues that M a r x was right about the primacy o f control over material resources, the means o f production, in the structuring o f developing capitalist societies, but rejects his assumption that this primacy is true for all societies. 16 Giddens points to Weber's emphasis on the significance in most societies o f another aspect o f power, control over " a u t h o r i z a t i o n " "capabilities which generate c o m m a n d over persons."17 The role o f the state and o f a professional stratum with its technical expertise is significant in m o d e r n class structures through c o m m a n d over the latter resources rather than through ownership or non-ownership of property.

501 As Gramsci too suggests, 18 intellectuals or the "experts" play an important ideological role in advanced capitalist social formations, especially in attempting to establish societal consensus; Konrad and Szelenyi have noted something similar in Eastern Europe. 19 They argue that as the intellectual or professional sector has struggled to achieve power and establish its labor market position, it has sought also to extend its system o f values as the norm for the new "rationally managed" society. In the west, the professional-managerial class or sector has also endeavored to promote its own "technocratic consciousness" as Habermas has termed it. 2~ The Ehrenreichs clearly recognize this process in their contribution to the debates on the "PMC."2~ Like Wright, they stress the contradictory nature of the experts' position in the class structure, and acknowledge that their intervention in domestic life was part of a broader ideological task. Although the role of "experts" in the extension of a technocratic consciousness to widening spheres of life, including the family and personal relationships, has been noted by several other writers too, its implications have not been fully grasped. Whilst non-Marxist writers Berger and Kellner22 note the "carryover" of rationality from the economic sector to others, Christopher Lasch and Jacques Donzelot, 23 working from radically different intellectual bases, have provided the most explicit discussion but from a clearly non-feminist, if not even anti-feminist, perspective. 24 Strongly influenced by German critical theory's stress on the importance o f family and psychological factors, Lasch has argued that the impact o f the professionals has meant a socially fatal decline in parental competence. The fluctuations in childrearing prompted by some o f the experts, especially the extension of "permissiveness," contributed to formation o f the modern personality type, the "narcissist." This "minimal" self may be suited to survival in a threatening world but promises little hope of emancipatory action. 25 It is at the door of medicine and psychiatry but other "helping professions" too - social workers, child psychologists, and miscellaneous other therapists - that Lasch lays much of the blame for encouraging the culture of narcissism. He sees parents, however, especially mothers, as having aided and abetted them. A similar theme, the "alliance" between women and the professionals, is apparent in Donzelot's La Police des Families. Concerned with the expansion of what he terms the "psy" complex, the medicopsychiatric-social work field of intervention, Donzelot acknowledges his debt to Michel Foucault. He applies an analysis similar to that developed by Foucault in recent years, including the provocative suggestion concerning "bio-politics," the "administration" of everyday existence, but

502 especially the "administration of bodies and the calculated management of life. ''26 Donzelot's argument that the emergence of the modern family and the expansion of the "psy" organizations are a single process, and one "not politically innocent," directs attention to similar issues as does Lasch. The Foucauldian and critical theory traditions here reveal common themes despite their markedly different intellectual origins. The changing nature of domination and control in modern societies, the constitution of sexuality as problematic, and the interest in the experts' transformation of the family and its relation to increasingly subtle forms of manipulation of the individual - all these are recurrent concerns. Both interpretations reject traditional Marxist analysis, largely out of dissatisfaction with its economism and inability to illumine the connections between the public and private spheres in advanced technological societies. Unfortunately, the underlying similarity of their conclusions, which I think are quite marked in spite of their quite antagonistic intellectual premises, is also joined by some shared and fundamental weaknesses. At the level of explanation of these various developments and at that of empirical application, these interpretations remain ultimately inadequate, lacking in their analysis even of class, but most overwhelmingly, of gender. Neither Lasch nor Donzelot fully address the issue of in whose interests the professionals were working, and they betray a strong predilection for the patriarchal bourgeois family as a basis of social order. They too readily assume the effectiveness of the experts' efforts and neglect the active role played by women themselves (issues that I explore elsewhere27). In the following brief account of the intervention by "experts" in Australian domestic life, I argue that the "contradictoriness" of the professionals' role is especially marked. Their project of making the home and private life more rational and scientific was part of a broader ideological role of the professional middle class, but it implicitly threatened the status quo of gender relations.

The Australian context: the colonial bourgeois family In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Australia as a nation was only in the process of formation. The 1890s in particular were a period of class struggle as unions and the labor movement asserted themselves vigorously against both the rural landowning elite and the urban bourgeoisie. 28 The six colonies struggled to maintain autonomy, particularly over trade, but to come together in a new political consensus in-

503 d e p e n d e n t o f " M o t h e r E n g l a n d . " Federation was finally achieved in 1901 and a new national government, along with what were now state legislatures, pursued an active role in social matters. A multitude o f laws a n d regulations were introduced to control wages a n d working conditions and to improve health, education, and welfare. A l t h o u g h the United States was looked to as an example o f a p r o s p e r o u s "new world" society, the Australian state t o o k a m o r e interventionist role. A d o m i n a n t feature o f Australian debates in this period was fear o f "racial d e t e r i o r a t i o n , " a concern also evident in Britain after revelation o f the p o o r health o f Boer War recruits. But in Australia the debates reflected concern that the "white race" might deteriorate in the w a r m e r climate, a n d prove unequal to the c o m p e t i t i o n o f neighboring Asian peoples. Racist diatribes were c o m m o n , but ideologues, some doctors for example, also p r o c l a i m e d the Australian p o p u l a t i o n to be in danger because o f the hazards o f u r b a n life. 29 Again, this t h e m e was not uniquely Australian - Stuart Ewen has pointed out the extent to which A m e r i c a n advertising played o n it in the twenties. 3~ However even in the nineteenth century, Australia was, a n d has remained, an extraordinarily urbanized society with s o m e two-thirds o f the p o p u l a t i o n living in u r b a n areas by the 1890s. 31 Indeed, the m a j o r i t y o f the p o p u l a t i o n has been concentrated in a few m a j o r cities a r o u n d the southeastern coast. Despite the significance o f rural myths in Australian culture, the m a i n f r a m e o f reference for the household, then, has been the city and suburbs. Melbourne's u r b a n growth, for example, in the late nineteenth century was considered by c o n t e m p o r a r i e s to be quite remarkable, a n d this m e a n t in particular the growth o f suburbia. A l t h o u g h h o m e ownership rates were not as high in the capital cities as in c o u n t r y areas, a p p r o x i m a t e l y a third to a h a l f o f Sydney and Melb o u r n e h o m e s seem to have been, or were being, b o u g h t by their occupiers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. 32 The overwhelming c o m m o n p a t t e r n was that o f the single domestic dwelling on its own block o f land, b o t h house a n d a l l o t m e n t size varying considerably with social position. Australian u r b a n growth was rapid in the 1880s and declined with the depression o f the 1890s, only recovering slowly in the years after the turn o f the century before the First World War. In the 1920s and 1930s a period o f s u b u r b a n growth was again followed by the stagnation o f a m a j o r depression. These developments reflected the overall processes o f capital f o r m a t i o n and utilization t h a t were p a r t o f inter-

504 national developments. The m a j o r cities grew first as m a j o r commercial centers, with industrial development increasing from the t880s on, but not becoming the d o m i n a n t force until into the twentieth century. 33 Even in the late nineteenth century, Sydney and Melbourne sprawled over a considerable area because o f the popularity o f the detached, single-story dwelling o n its own piece o f land. The ideology o f h o m e and family that characterized Australian society until after the First World War consisted o f several complex, intermingled strands. The main sources available to the historian are the published accounts of clergymen, politicians, and other public figures, who on m a n y occasions reiterated assumptions they t o o k for granted were shared by their audience. O n other occasions they put forward arguments for maintaining a style o f h o m e and family that they considered now under attack, particularly because o f the pressures o f urban, industrial life and women's move into the public world. In these sources, the imagery o f suburban domestic life presented in speeches, sermons, and stories was generally one o f peaceful homes in which a clear-cut sexual division o f labor existed between husband and wife; children were orderly, "well-governed"; and n e i g h b o r h o o d relationships were helpful and harmonious. T h a t this was not always the case is quite obvious from other sources, but the ideology remained nonetheless. Although the pervasive c o m m e n t s about the h o m e as a haven were couched in general terms, it was implicitly as a haven for men that it was seen. In definitions o f " h o m e " solicited by a Melbourne suburban paper for its women's page in 1904, this theme is a recurrent one; " H o m e is the resting place for the workworn, and shelter for the storm tossed"; "a world o f strife shut out, a world o f love shut in.'34 The theme occurs in all sources t h r o u g h o u t the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, although it becomes less m a r k e d after the First World War. The h o m e and family were thought to be characterized by intimate and personal relationships inappropriate to the public world o f industry and commerce. The "sentiment o f domesticity," as Shorter refers to it, was certainly not peculiar to Australia but was part o f a widespread bourgeois ideoIogy o f the family. Its strength in Australia was doubtless increased by the ideology and actual patterns o f h o m e ownership. The emphasis on the h o m e as a place o f rest and expressive relationships was o f course more appropriate for men than for women; for the latter it continued to be the locus o f their daily work, whereas men were increasingly away from h o m e in the industrial workforce. The separation o f the spheres o f h o m e and work was an integral part o f capitalist industrial development, which was represented as a natural sexual division o f labor and influence.

505 Feminist writers have directed attention to the significance, not just o f the bourgeois family model in general, but its construction o f femininity in particular. 35 A great deal o f the evidence o n nineteenth-century family patterns, not only from the neo-Marxist tradition but even from liberal historians, indicates that certain ideas about women were pivotal to the bourgeois family. 36 Although it is not possible here to explore the many facets o f the Victorian "ideal o f true w o m a n h o o d , " several features relate to my argument, a strong emphasis o n women's nurturant and maternal capacities was linked to a discourse on moral sensibilities. Increasingly women came to be seen as more morally responsible and o f course more chaste than men. This tied in closely with the concept o f separate spheres for the sexes, women seen more and more as economically and socially dependent on their menfolk and fundamentally located in the domestic sphere rather than in the "masculine" world o f politics, industry, and commerce. Two essential points emerge from this s u m m a r y portrayal o f Victorian w o m a n h o o d . First, it was overwhelmingly the p r o d u c t i o n of a particular class, the bourgeoisie. Many other historians have described the "angel in the house" characterization o f femininity and its creation by the bourgeoisie, and I have no evidence f r o m my own research that leads me to dispute their conclusion. Furthermore, as Catherine Hall has argued, the development o f gender divisions actually helped in the construction o f the bourgeoisie as a class, unifying them and demarcating their specific culture from those o f the aristocracy and the working class. 37 There is an aspect o f the bourgeois ideology o f w o m a n h o o d , however, which has been less widely discussed. This is the way in which it drew upon, but reformulated in a contradictory manner, older cultural associations o f women with " n a t u r e , " m e n with "culture. ''38 T h e bourgeois emphasis o n w o m e n as weaker, more passive and dependent beings, as sexually innocent yet spontaneously nurturant and maternal, was a refined and romanticized version o f an age-old theme in Western culture: the association o f women with aspects o f existence regarded as threatening to masculine-defined cultural reality. As Rosemary Radford Ruether has cogently argued, not only women but non-white races and slaves have been portrayed as representative o f the lower half o f a dualism, the "inferior realm o f bodily 'nature,' while ruling-class males identify themselves with transcendent spirit.'39 She goes on to suggest, as have other feminist writers such as Simone de Beauvoir, that Western culture in particular has seen "the relation o f spirit to b o d y [as] one o f repression, subjugation and mastery. Material existence is ontologically inferior to mind and the root o f moral evil." While at first glance bourgeois

506 femininity seems to represent a curious inversion of the identification of women with the body and with evil, particularly sexual lust, I think Ruether rightly suggests that the basic cultural dynamics remained. The superficial reversal of earlier typologies - the representation now of bourgeois women as moral, men as materialistic - served to suppor~ *he removal of moral, spiritual, and interpersonal values from the public world of industry and commerce. Safely located with women in the domestic sphere, they were devalued and marginalized but kept alive in a haven for the work-worn alienated male. This development of course also laid the basis for women's claims to enter the public world to "purify" it through temperance and other campaigns. During the nineteenth century this model of the bourgeois home and women was loudly supported by Australian clergy, by politicians, and by many members of the medical profession. By the 1900s, however, other professionals such as teachers, public health officials, and psychologists were joining the chorus of prescriptions for domestic life, but to a new tune: that of the modern world of science, technology, and rational, calculating efficiency. By the early decades of the twentieth century the Australian States each had a core of "experts." They corresponded and met with each other, both professionally and socially, and despite factions and disputes, frequently supported each others' endeavors. The same people regularly appeared on committees and in government inquiries and they shared a similar social background. Frequently of Nonconformist, but increasingly secular background, they came from families of the colonial urban middle class in which the values of sobriety and diligence were accompanied by aspirations for worldly advancement. They were then an emerging social group for which formal education and particular skills promised greater prestige and power than held by their professional or petit-bourgeois parents. The growth of State institutions provided the opportunity; not only the general expansion of the public service but particular developments such as the emergence of the bureaucracy of health and education departments opened up new occupational positions. 4~ In Australia, as elsewhere, members of the professional middle class have claimed that they could reconcile opposing interests in society; that their technical, trained expertise pointed the way to a new social future in which rationally applied knowledge would replace outmoded social conflict. In the early part of the twentieth century Australian intellectuals, like those in Britain and the United States, proclaimed the need for "rational" and "social" efficiency.41 They also sought to extend bureaucratic and industrial management principles and techniques to the domestic sphere.

507 In Australia doctors, teachers and kindergarteners, child psychologists, and domestic science specialists shared common goals in terms of making the home and family more " m o d e r n " and "scientific." They worked toward this goal through a variety of avenues. There was explicit "advice" literature on new styles of infant care, child rearing, and home management. Organizations such as those for infant health and welfare were established as institutional frameworks for the propagation of the reformers' efforts. Agents of the burgeoning welfare state drew on the assumptions about appropriate standards o f domestic cleanliness and family management that were being developed by other professionals, especially doctors. Women in particular bore the brunt of the assault on established patterns of domestic life and family relationships. Ehrenreich and English have described in detail prescriptions issued by American health and welfare professionals. 42 As feminists, their account of the experts' intervention in the household shows much more understanding of its implications for women than do Lasch or Donzelot. Yet in other respects this interpretation of the role of the professional-managerial class 43 shares the weakness of these other analyses. Not only is a more fully empirically substantiated account necessary than others have provided to date, but there has been a general failure to explore tensions and ambivalence in the processes described, and hence too great a readiness to accept the effectiveness of class and gender domination. By contrast, the following discussion indicates a more complex picture, one in which a significant contradiction can be traced between the bourgeois ideology of women and the family, and the rationalizing project of the new professional middle class.

The science of household management In Australia during the period between the 1880s and World War II, women's traditional chores - cooking, cleaning, sewing, and generally servicing the needs of others - and their childbearing and rearing, became redefined as scientific work of national importance. However, this was not unproblematic. On the one hand, the theme of the family as a retreat from an increasingly harsh and alien industrial world continued to be promoted by bourgeois ideologues who saw the domestic world as fundamentally the world of women, with natural instincts toward "nest building." On the other hand, the domestic economy and infant welfare movements demanded that women be trained in modern management techniques, that these be applied to homemaking and childrearing. Traditional "feminine" instincts were thought insufficient for the mod-

508 ern world; household management and cookery should become part of the school curricula because girls and young mothers would have to learn mothercraft. An ideology of modern housewifery and motherhood permeated most of the Australian discourse on women and the family by the early twentieth century. The professionals in medicine, architecture and town planning, and education directed their attention to the particular problems of working-class domestic life, but also aimed to modify domestic practices in all classes. Changes in both reproduction and production provided a material basis for their efforts. The shift to smaller families was readily apparent in Australia by the 1900s, 44 and new materials, energy, and equipment were being slowly introduced to the home even while food and clothing production increasingly left it. 45 The Australian domestic economy movement commenced with quite small beginnings in cookery classes in state elementary schools in the late 1880s and early 1890s. The development was part of a growing emphasis on practical skills training, which eventuated in the extension of kindergarten methods and technical education. Both British and North American ideas were influential. During the years after World War I, domestic science teaching became widespread throughout the various school systems of the Australian states. As with many related developments, the establishment o f domestic economy teaching tended to be ad hoc, with diverse sources of support. In the State of Victoria, for example, a group of women led the promotion of domestic science in the 1890s and 1900s. Organized loosely by late 1904 into the Australian Institute of Domestic Economy, they held meetings, demonstrations, and competitions throughout 1905 as part of their pressure on the state government to establish a major training center. 46 Included in the group around A.I.D.E., and providing the general initiative for "dom. sci." as it was later known, were leading women journalists and teachers in both state and private schools. They were supported by women of high social status such as Janet, (Lady) Clarke, and the wife of the State Governor, Margaret, (Lady) Talbot. Women's organizations, especially the National Council of Women, the association of women teachers, and suffrage groups were further significant supporters. The thrust of domestic economy was accepted by Labour as well as non-Labour political groups. 47 Educational administrators such as Dr. John Smyth, principal of the Melbourne Teachers' College, were also active in their support. Most vocal publicly were professional women, such as Dr. Jane Greig, School Medical Officer, and Dr. Edith Barrett, a founder of Bush Nursing. They participated in curriculum development but also institutionally through membership o f the College Council. They also took a broad ideological

509 role, sharing with other publicists the p r o m o t i o n o f preparing girls for "their special business in life. ''4s Mrs. Stella Allan, as "Vesta" of the M e l b o u r n e daily p a p e r the Argus eventually replaced Rita Vaile o f the HeraM as a leading exponent o f " d o m e s t i c f e m i n i s m " ; that w o m e n ' s m a j o r c o n t r i b u t i o n to the world was as wives a n d m o t h e r s and special training would improve their perform a n c e o f that role. Despite being s o m e t h i n g o f a "new w o m a n " herself, with LL.B. and M.A. degrees f r o m New Zealand, Mrs. Allan threw herself into the cause, participating in M e l b o u r n e charitable activities for over thirty years. T h r o u g h "Vesta's" column, she had a m a j o r influence o n public o p i n i o n on child and m a t e r n a l welfare issues, and on the imp o r t a n c e o f training girls in their domestic duties. 49 In 1921 "Vesta" advocated carrying war-time lessons into the home, lessons learnt f r o m industry: That time means money and that method sax,es both time and material, tha~ co-ordination of work leads to efficiency, that exactitude in the smallest detail is necessary if a perfect product is to be secured - what a transformation of domestic work would result if these principles could be brought to rule in the kitchen as they do in the factory.5~ She went o n to say that w o m e n should no longer be content with old wasteful methods, but should develop a " p a s s i o n for efficiency; a zeal for m e t h o d a n d organization, a knowledge o f the value o f things, that will go far to solve the p r o b l e m o f domestic l a b o r . " In "Vesta's" m a n y articles a n d in a variety o f other sources, several interconnected concerns are apparent; those with the p r o b l e m s presented by the shortage o f domestic help, the need for e c o n o m y and m a n a g e r i a l skills, the d o m i nance o f science, a n d the significance o f new h o u s e h o l d equipment. These reflected m a j o r developments in the public sphere that directly or indirectly affected women's housewifery role. A r o u n d them, an overall ideological f r a m e w o r k developed, but one that overlaid s o m e basic tensions a m o n g the class factions involved. T h e motives o f some o f the m o s t significant s u p p o r t e r s o f domestic science in Victoria differed however f r o m those o f the professional experts of the m o v e m e n t and their closest w o m e n colleagues. In particular, two bourgeois philanthropists, employers turned politicians, George Swinburne and William M c P h e r s o n , provided the institutional bases in M e l b o u r n e for domestic science. Swinburne, with his wife's encouragement, s u p p o r t e d the establishment o f domestic science in the m a j o r eastern suburbs technical school that he helped inaugurate and later en-

510 dowed. Sir William M c P h e r s o n provided s toward building a new domestic science college in 1926, to be n a m e d after his wife, Emily. 51 As State Treasurer he h a d been aware o f the need for a new building to replace the existing overcrowded and underserviced College o f Domestic Economy. His personal e n d o w m e n t though, came as a surprise ann o u n c e m e n t on the eve o f his departure for Europe. In his own words: he was greatly impressed with the splendid work being carried on in the interest of the young womanhood, and especially the girls of the working class of our community... My wife and I desire to do something to forward a branch of education which we consider is of great value to the home life of our people.52 The significance o f M c P h e r s o n ' s benevolence toward "institutions aiming at the benefit o f w o m a n k i n d " (he also endowed a women's hospital) can be interpreted in various ways. On the one hand, he seemed quite clearly to have the training o f working-class girls in mind. He wanted b o t h to "improve" their h o m e life generally and also to solve the shortage o f domestic servants o f which members o f his class had long been complaining. O n the other, his patriarchal benevolence was expressed in his insistence that institutions be n a m e d after his wife a n d daughter. In her address to her students on the occasion o f Sir William's death in 1931, Miss Chisholm, Principal o f the Domestic E c o n o m y College, "emphasized the great value he had attached to h o m e life, and recalled that he had c o m m e n t e d on the great c o m f o r t it had been to him to be able to step from the stress and strain o f business or parliamentary duties into a h o m e life o f peace, affection and culture. ''53 N o t only, therefore, did he value the bourgeois h o m e as a "haven in a heartless world," but he also wanted to spread such homes to the working class. In later years, his daughter-in-law, long associated with the abovementioned college, recalled that he h a d strong opinions that "if a m a n was to be a g o o d and useful m e m b e r o f society, he needed and deserved a well-run home. ''54 His class position was significant: Too often in his capacity as an employer he had uncovered many cases of inefficient home management destroying a man's capacity for doing a decent job, owing to worry about home conditions, debt caused by bad management, illhealth through bad cooking.., and he had very strong views about women doing their job in the home properly.55 Interestingly enough, Sir William could happily overlook the difficulties o f w o m e n in the h o m e when it suited him; reminiscences o f the son o f the pastor o f the Congregational C h u r c h attended by the M c P h e r s o n s express bitterness at lack o f generosity closer to home. s6 The Minister's

511 wife was forced to extraordinary lengths to maintain her seven children on a small income and keep up the appearances of the bourgeois home. The new experts, the teachers associated with Domestic Economy; and their professional colleagues in medicine, education, and science did not share Sir William's narrow focus on working-class families. Indeed they explicitly rejected the idea that domestic science was to train servants. Like her successors, Mrs. Story, the Victorian Directress of Cookery, was already quite clear in 1900 about the broad role envisaged for domestic economy: O n e point m u s t be insisted upon. It is not the work o f the state to train servants. Girls s h o u l d be trained a n d educated to fit t h e m for their sphere in the home, the duties o f w h i c h no w o m a n can neglect without culpability a n d disgrace; they s h o u l d be given the instruction for their benefit, a n d for that o f their h o m e a n d family a n d country; a n d for n o other persons or p u r p o s e whatever. People w h o i m a g i n e t h a t cookery schools are established for the convenience o f mistresses requiring servants are very m u c h mistaken. 57

Nonetheless, not only the McPhersons, but many of the women who supported domestic science had earlier been involved in schemes to import domestic helpers as well. ss Whereas what they wanted were better trained working-class girls, both as servants and to keep working-class homes clean and thrifty, the professional advocates of domestic science were aiming at a wider market, including their middle-class sisters. This difference in motivation and emphasis, although covered over by the cooperation o f the different groups, was of long-term significance. The principles o f planning and management put forward by the professional experts for running the homes of the nation, and especially the emphasis on training women for their tasks, really went against the bourgeois stress on the family as a separate private sphere centered on natural womanly qualities. The actual content of the domestic scientists' message deserves further attention; it reveals emphases c om m on to other developments such as those related to child rearing where similar contradictions emerged. The first major emphasis was on the application of scientific knowledge to the home. The curricula of domestic economy programs, both specialized trade courses and those in general housewifery, included stress on the principles of chemistry, biology, and nutrition. Scientific theory was the basis o f instruction in a range of practical subjects, cookery, sewing and millinery, and laundry work. The aim of winning "recognition of the importance of teaching women's special subjects from a scientific

512 basis ''59 was to increase the status of women's domestic labor, but also to bring it into line with the demands of the modern world. Old ways were no longer to be regarded as good enough. Standards had risen and women should turn from learning domestic skills in a hit-and-miss fashion from mothers to specialized instruction from experts. The reasons given for making household organization consistent with the principles of modern, efficient management focused on the needs of urban industrial society. It was recognized that the housewife's role was changing from that of a domestic producer to a consumer of goods mass produced and purchased outside the home. The stress on economy drew on older notions of "thrift," but incorporated ideas of regular budgeting and other aspects of rational calculation that were emphasized as essential office and factory procedures. Moreover, as "Vesta" suggested, work itself was to be organized along the lines of time and motion studies. The kitchen was to be a "laboratory" and the layout of the home was to be modified to minimize unnecessary steps. By the interwar period, Australian architects' discussions reflected the influence of the domestic economy movement on hygiene and efficiency. A stress on the qualities of sunlight and fresh air, for example, produced not only larger windows, but fly-wired verandas as "sleep-outs." In the twenties, open-air schools were promoted to improve the health of working-class children. Similar concerns emerged in the advocacy of walks for pregnant and nursing mothers, and "sunkicks" for babies. The themes apparent in the domestic science movement, but also the evident tensions in motivation and initiative between the professionals and other supporters, were reflected too in developments related to child rearing.

Managing children Contemporaries of the reformers of infancy and childhood in the early twentieth century were well aware of the importance of the developments they were witnessing. Regularly, at scientific conferences in Australia and in the public media, professionals of medicine, psychology, and education proclaimed the dawning of a new area, an age of children. 6~ These sentiments were more than hollow speech-making, they reflected the growth o f institutions and professions concerned specifically with the management both of babies and older children. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the very naturalness of women's mothering became redefined. The infant welfare movement involved a major effort to teach women how to mother their children in the approved manner. 6~

513 This was thought necessary because o f the ill effects o f civilization; although the mothering instinct was o f course just that, an instinct, it had become submerged by the demands o f civilization. Sister M a u d Primrose, a M e l b o u r n e infant welfare leader, agreed with overseas "authorities" Saleeby and Truby King that mothercraft was not "learnt by instinct" but was necessary to make up for the inadequacy o f women's maternal capacities. 62 In Australia, mothercraft was first developed as part o f a broader program o f health education, which included public health campaigns and an emphasis on h o m e hygiene. However, after the turn o f the century, interest in the welfare o f babies and children became more and more a matter o f wider professional concern and pediatrics became a specialist interest. By the 1920s and 1930s, with the institutionalization o f the infant welfare movement, " M o t h e r c r a f t " had emerged as a new d o m a i n o f knowledge, now under professional control and ready for popular dissemination a m o n g the women's magazines and feature pages o f the newspapers. The spreading system o f state supported baby health clinics, or health centers, as they preferred to call them in Victoria, entailed the growth o f a new professional group o f nurses. Along with doctors, psychologists, and kindergarteners, they eagerly embarked on a campaign o f reforming and modernizing patterns of child care. Feeding, clothing, and general m a n a g e m e n t o f the baby were all subjected to new advice that stressed regularity and discipline on the one hand, but individuality on the other. Most significantly, all aspects o f maternity and child care, from pregnancy to breastfeeding to managing a pre-schooler, were to be brought under professional scrutiny. It was on the grounds that the professionals u n d e r s t o o d the intricacies o f the baby's digestive system that they claimed the right to dictate the timing and amounts o f milk that should be given. The clock was to be the mother's standard reference for regular feeding and a great deal o f attention was given to calculating the necessary protein content o f an infant's food. In the discussion o f artificial feeding of infants in particular, scientific principles were to be p a r a m o u n t . The concerns with precision, measurement, and standardization were, however, apparent not only in this area; the later years o f childhood also came under professional scrutiny. In education, the growth o f the pre-school movement and o f educational psychology produced new positions for middle-class professionals and the context for them to spread their views o n child rearing. The medical profession was claiming particular expertise in the development o f older children as well as babies. Kindergarteners, medical inspectors o f

514 schools, pediatricians, and child psychologists shared an interest in the scientific study o f the child and a stress on proclaiming the i m p o r t a n c e o f professional expertise in child rearing matters. 6~ A l t h o u g h the details o f these professional claims, let alone their effects, cannot be explored here, similarities with the message and initiatives in the field o f domestic science are evident. In infant welfare, in the movements to establish kindergartens and playgrounds and medical inspection in schools, some o f the same contradictions and tensions in motivation between different groups emerged as in domestic science. T h e initiative for the establishment o f kindergartens and playgrounds, for example, came primarily in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century from bourgeois women and men who were concerned with the condition of the u r b a n working class. They worried about the morals, the behavior, and the physical fitness o f working-class children in particular. Kindergartens and playgrounds in inner-urban industrial areas were established to produce a morally uplifted, conscientious working class o f the future. 64 Children were also to be used to ref o r m working-class homes; they were to be "coaxed into the kindergarten" to experience "new sensations": They step from dust, squalor and vice into an atmosphere of cleanliness, and refinement, of bright colours and soft voices. And then, here is the important point, from revelling in the pleasure of order, and love, they go back to their homes and begin to exert an influence upon their family surroundings.65 T h e professionals influenced by child psychology and new educational m e t h o d s had broader goals in mind t h a n simply the reform o f the working class. In Melbourne, for example, the Free Kindergarten U n i o n experienced considerable tension and even a series o f lively disputes a m o n g the bourgeois philanthropists and the professionals over the basic goals and strategies o f the movement. 66 By the inter-war period the latter were clearly in the ascendancy, as they were too in infant welfare. By the 1930s the pre-school movement was heavily influenced by theories o f psychology and child development, especially those imported f r o m the United States by professionals such as May Gutteridge and Christine Heinig from the M e l b o u r n e Kindergarten Teachers' College. 67 The Australian Council o f Educational Research, financed f r o m the United States by the Carnegie F o u n d a t i o n in the thirties, p r o m o t e d intelligence testing and other "scientific" approaches to understanding children. The m a j o r thrust o f this message was reminiscent o f other movements such as domestic science. Mothers generally were to be instructed in new m o d e r n scientific ways o f caring for children, and child-care specialists were to provide the knowledge for them to apply under supervision.

515

Ideological ingredients: rationalit3; science and hygiene Before returning to discussion o f the theoretical significance o f the role o f the professional middle class as described briefly above, the themes that linked their range o f activities with regard to reforming the management o f h o m e and family can be drawn together. The professionals shared some c o m m o n preoccupations that distinguished their endeavors f r o m those o f bourgeois philanthropists and charity workers. The former were not just interested in improving working-class habits, in instilling bourgeois domestic values, but were engaged in a project o f greater scope and moment, the reshaping o f society itself. 68 In their several concerns, not all o f which can be discussed adequately here, recurrent themes are apparent. One was emphasis on rationality and control, another on science and measurement, and a third on hygiene, both physical and, as they said themselves, "mental hygiene." While subsidiary interests wove in and out, these were the core o f the technocratic consciousness o f the professional "re-formers" of the family. The concern with rationality ran through the emphasis on the efficient household, but also through the increasing acceptance o f contraception, the changing understanding o f sexuality in marriage that it entailed, and through the strategies relating to child rearing. 69 Secular h u m a n i s m and liberal Christianity came together in the stress on humans as creatures o f rational will. The " m o d e r n " was to put away superstition, including "old wives' tales," and place one's trust in new scientific knowledge. The practical application o f carefully established principles was the ideal in m a n y areas and the notion o f " m a n a g e m e n t " was the key to right technique. Hence " m a n a g i n g " the household, the children, one's own body, and the b o d y politic were all linked. All the m a j o r reforming strategies were seen as educative in nature, based on the assumption that education would tap the springs o f rationality and sweet reason would solve the pressing social and practical problems. A well-ordered hearth and home, disciplined children preparing to be efficient workers and citizens, and a welI-managed public world would be the result. The characteristic m o d e o f operation o f the ideal rational man and w o m a n was, o f course, science, and the emphasis on extending scientific principles to formerly non-scientific areas was a d o m i n a n t goal. The domestic science movement stressed, as we have seen, the scientific principles o f nutrition, drawing on chemistry to legitimate its m o d e r n technique o f cookery and on biological sciences for its estimates o f h u m a n food needs. Similarly, the infant welfare movement drew heavily on

516 chemistry for the " m o d e r n " understanding of the components of milk for infants. The two related aspects of scientization are apparent with outstanding clarity in this particular development, the concern with isolating and manipulating ingredients of the natural world, and with standardizing and measuring them. Along with the latter went an attempt to standardize the human population too, babies and children were to be measured, graphed, and predicted in the mode of the experiments of natural science. Thus the interest in the accurate measurement o f milk mixtures, and hence in objects such as jugs and spoons, the utensils to be used, was reflected in an interest in also standardizing the baby. Although claims continued to be made for the importance of individuality and varying rates of development, "the one baby too fat, the other too thin" syndrome emerged. The increased interest in population questions in industrial capitalist societies in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was part of a growing professionalization of the measurement of people. In Australia in the years either side of Federation in 1901, population debates took on particular significance in the light of nationalism and racist concerns about the new country as a white outpost in Asia. Outcries against the decline of the Australian birth rate were generated partly through debates on population measurement triggered by rivalry between statisticians of the states of New South Wales and Victoria. As the state apparatus expanded its domain, the calculation of population trends brought formerly familial territory into its sphere of calculation. Not only was the measurement of the population closely linked to the emergence of state bureaucracy, but the jobs of many members of the new professional middle class arose out of controlling the amount and quality of the population. People were, it was regularly proclaimed, important products and their quality control was a matter of national and economic significance. Dr. Vera Scantlebury Brown, Victorian Director of Infant Welfare, for example, on occasion promoted infant welfare on the grounds of its soundness as an economic investment in the future workforce: "Ask yourself this question - is it a sound proposition to spend money on the care of mothers and babies? ''7~ A similar concern with the worth per head of the population underlay many public health or "moral and social hygiene" campaigns such as that against VD. The theme of hygiene encapsulates the practical application o f the scientific mode par excellence. The "waves of sanitary sensitivity" spreading over society to which Dr. Jane Greig, Victorian School Medical Officer, looked forward with optimism, were to be the

517 salvation o f social problems. 71 The i m p o r t a n c e o f hygiene as a dominant m o t i f o f the period can hardly be over-stressed. As the frequent use o f the expression " m o r a l and social hygiene" implies, not only individual, personal cleanliness was at stake, but the condition o f the populace at large was conceptualized in terms o f health. For b o t h individual and society "hygiene" had two aspects, the physical and the mental. In the health reform movement o f the nineteenth century the prime focus was on basic issues o f sanitation and physical disease. W h a t Lasch refers to as the "religion o f health" and a "medical m o d e o f salvation" was the basis in Australia, as in the United States, for the attempts to reshape family and personal life. 72 The missionary zeal o f the health crusaders was remarkable, their cause was to stamp out dirt and disease, through education regarding refuse and drains and the necessity o f sunlight and fresh air. H o u s i n g reform efforts and architectural discourse were full o f such concerns and they extended into the advice to women o n managing their pregnant bodies and their infants. In sexuality too, notions o f cleanliness pervaded discussion: although more frequently in terms o f moral or mental hygiene, hints o f a fastidiousness concerning physical cleanliness can be discerned in the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century literature. It was the " m e n t a l " aspect o f the hygiene preoccupation, however, which was o f even greater significance. The reinterpretation o f moral and religious matters in medical guise has been, as Foucault a m o n g others has pointed out, a fundamental feature o f the emergence o f m o d e r n western society. The reformulation o f attitudes and behavior in terms o f "mental hygiene" was clear, both with regard to child rearing and sexual relationships. The infiltration o f psychological and psychiatric concepts into the discourse on family interaction was under way in Australia before the first World War, but reached a zenith in the 1930s. By this period parents, especially mothers o f course, were being charged not only with the child's physical health but its psychological development; it was national d u t y to train the child to be a "well-balanced" citizen o f the future. The parent-child relationship was therefore to be m u c h more problematic, a matter o f negotiation rather than nature. The measurement o f the infant and school child, which betrayed the interests in the normalization o f the population, had its parallel in the notions o f normal psychological development and n o r m a l parent-child relationship. A l t h o u g h the p h e n o m e n o n o f "mental testing" was at first applied to those labeled delinquents or feeble-minded rather t h a n to the

518 general population of children, the notion of normality implied by such procedures was filtering into public consciousness by the thirties. By this stage these several elements of what I have called the professionals' "technocratic consciousness" were being widely disseminated not only directly through their own institutionalized activities but through the popular media as well. These processes took particular forms in Australia hut were common in other western countries as well. The Australian evidence however indicates that the attempt of the "experts" to spread technical rationality to the family household was not a smooth, troublefree process. Apart from the resistance it encountered from women that I have discussed elsewhere, 73 it ran counter to the view of home and family promoted by members of the bourgeoisie. The latter collaborated with the professionals in many projects oriented toward reforming working-class living patterns, but I have argued that such cooperation hid an underlying contradiction. I return to the theoretical issues this raises in the final section of this article.

Conclusion: extending the critique of instrumental reason In the late nineteenth and increasingly in the twentieth century, members of the professional middle class spearheaded a series of attempts to modernize domestic life according to the principles of science and technology and the rational efficiency thought characteristic of capitalist industry. Although the experts were seemingly unaware of any contradictions between their general project and other aspects of domestic ideology, most were quite clear about the breadth of their mission; it was to re-form not just working-class family life, as others may have thought, but even that of bourgeois families. In their efforts to alter both the material shape of the household in such aspects as housing design and equipment, and to change patterns of behavior such as childcare, the emergent professional class sought to make the domestic sphere compatible with the public wortd. The extension of this modern technocratic consciousness to personal life and the organization of the home, however, was fundamentally incompatible with some of the assumptions upon which the dominant bourgeois family model was based. In particular, the emphasis on the bourgeois home as a refuge, a sanctuary of affective relations in a cold, impersonal world, was directly threatened by the importation into the domestic sphere of the principles of action characteristic of industry and commerce. Furthermore, technical rationality ran counter to the bour-

519 geois interpretation of femininity. As purposive-rational action is the type o f human action most based on mind and will, the extension of such action to women's traditional sphere undermines assumptions about their lower status as more "earthy," less "cultural," as intrinsically closer to nature than menfl 4 This interpretation of the nature of femininity seems to have characterized many human societies in the past. It has still been reflected in the assumed naturalness of women's performance o f domestic labor and of child-bearing and rearing in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The identification of women with housework and motherhood, and vice versa, has been an essential ingredient o f the bourgeois ideology of the family in Australia as elsewhere. Women were regarded as both "natural" housewives and mothers because of their feminine nature, their instincts: yet they were also increasingly the target for another, profoundly contradictory, mode of operation on the part o f the professional middle class. In the historical contradictions pointed to here we can see clues to some interconnections between gender and class oppression that if pursued, could inform strategies for future emancipatory action. The critique of instrumental reason developed by Weber and by the Frankfurt School is a starting point. In the Dialectic of Enlightenment, Horkheimer and Adorno took up the problem of the contradiction in the enlightenment notion of reason, that between liberating reason and reason as the subjection of the natural world, relating the domination o f nature to the domination of people. 75 Sharing Weber's concern that the spread o f science and technology meant the ascendancy of instrumental over practical reason, Adorno and Horkheimer suggest, but only in passing, that gender dynamics may have been involved in the long-term historical process. In discussing the Odysseus saga, they note that the dangers facing Odysseus are portrayed as fundamentally female, and delineated by H o m e r primarily in terms of sexual temptation. 76 Odysseus's journey, say Adorno and Horkheimer, is symbolic of patriarchaI society. Repression of sexuality and, with it, the suppression of women have been the price paid for marriage and social order, "for the establishment of systematic conditions of sexual reproduction" upon which property and labor depend. 77 They argue that the ancient identification o f women with nature has taken a different form in modern bourgeois society - that of incorporating women into a maledominated world - but only in a broken form, that of "female chastity and propriety.'78 Although they also imply that women's resistance to the patriarchal social order is potentially emancipatory, they express little hope that "the scoldings of the f u r y . . , will become a sign of humani-

520 ty," painting instead a scornful picture of modern women as "engulfed in a morass of paltry rackets, religious sects and hobbies."79 Later critical theorists have similarly failed to integrate analysis of gender adequately into the critique of instrumental rationality. In spite o f Marcuse's yearning for "matriarchal values," and Habermas's concern to articulate a new motivational ethic for modern society, like Adorno and Horkheimer, they have not fully explored the historical relations between the domination of nature and of women by men. The critical theory account - the triumph of instrumental reason and the decline of resistance even in the personal sphere, largely because of the demise of paternal authority - has been criticized for its overwhelming pessimism and political impotence. 8~ Feminists have indicted more recent versions, notably that of Lasch, as indeed misogynist. 81 The evidence presented above suggests a less depressing, if still more complex, historical development and lends support to an alternative feminist theoretical interpretation. The material base for the professionals' onslaught on the family was provided by two related developments; the increasing scale and complexity of capitalist industry and of the state that produced the market for their labor, and changes in the relation between the domestic and the wider economy. Not only was much economic production being removed from the household, but modern technology was being introduced into it and urban homes in particular were becoming dependent on external sources for energy as well as food and clothing. This development clearly contradicted the bourgeoisie's emphasis on the home as a sanctuary, and professionals who tried to rationalize the family were the agents of an emerging cultural contradiction. Their emphasis on a scientific approach to household management and to child-bearing and rearing certainly placed new pressures on women as houseworkers and mothers. New techniques of cookery and the stress on nutritional value, increased attention to domestic cleanliness and personal appearance, an emphasis on measuring the child's physical growth and taking responsibility for its psychological development - all these prescriptions laid a further burden on women. They also, however, laid the ground for further change. The new class o f experts who intervened in the management of the home and domestic relationships demonstrated that housework and childcare were not "natural" qualities embedded in women's biology. Further, and most revolutionary o f all, they established that reproduction itself could be controlled by rational means; modern feminism became possible.

521 The empirical material reported in this article supports another interpretation o f the historical development of technical rationality and of the modern family, than that of Adorno and Horkheimer, one that feminist writers have gone some way toward developing. By the late nineteenth century, Australian women like those in other western countries, were being pushed to the margins of economic production in spite of the experts' attempts to upgrade their diminishing role through the application of modern science. As Ruether argues, 82 this loss of economic status only completed a process of cultural marginalization that had been going on for centuries. Agreeing with De Beauvoir that men have made women the "other" in the course of the development of civilization, 83 Ruether suggests that this has been historically linked with the emerg en ce.o f a society predicated on the domination of nature. Women, sIaves, and other races were identified with the lower spheres to be subjugated; sexual and racial imagery, especially a body/spirit dualism, provided a model of oppression. Since the enlightenment, as Easlea and Merchant have shown, 84 modern science and technology in the service of industrial capitalism have expanded such domination beyond all previous bounds. Like other "eco-feminists," they see a continuing link between the "rape" of the earth and gender oppression. 85 Nonetheless, the situation of women has not been unchanged. The rational liberalism of bourgeois society tended to break down traditional hierarchies, including those of "head-people" and "body-people," hence those of race and gender. 86 If all people, women as well as men, possessed "practical rationality" inequality could no longer be justified on the grounds o f separate natural capacities. Distinctions that had been fundamental to class and gender oppression, and reflected domination of the natural world, were implicitly threatened; if the realm of spirit, the mind and will, could be extended to familial and gender relations supposedly the epitome of the body, the natural sphere - the model of domination was threatened. In the overwhelming expansion of the capitalist system then, not only have virtually all corners of the earth been rendered available for the exploitation of physical resources, but all social relationships have been opened to relentless considerations of calculation and exchange. In spite of the enormous ill effects caused by making relationships between people take on the features of relations between "things," for women there has been the revolutionary advantage o f admitting their inclusion in the sphere of culture. The resulting increase in formal equality flowed over into the family. The professionals, who sought to "modernize" familial practices were its

522 torchbearers, if often unwittingly or even unwillingly so. In accepting, in particular, women's right to control reproduction in order to more effectively "manage" their families, the experts who were often women themselves, provided justification for major social change. As Jessica Benjamin's analysis indicates, 87 the psychodynamics of love, authority, and personality formation in the family have altered too, but not necessarily with the dire outcomes feared by some critical theorists, ss Indeed Horkheimer partially acknowledged the comradiction discussed here; he suggested that the bourgeois family was "more than a mere lie" because it "endowed women with an idea of dignity, which ultimately as human dignity, worked toward emancipation.'89 To that can be added that the professional middle-class' extension of technical rationality to the household did likewise. In conclusion then, there was considerable significance in the experts' efforts described in this article. Movements such as domestic science, infant welfare, and the application of psychological principles to childrearing are o f more than passing historical interest. The undermining of patriarchal family and gender patterns that they helped set in train has been part o f the background to the emergence of feminism as a major social movement in the late twentieth century. What Zillah Eisenstein has called the "radical" future of liberal feminism has yet to be realized, 9~ but the internal contradictions of a still patriarchal yet industrial capitalist society will not be easily contained. Critical theory's exploration of the relation between broader cultural processes and the structuring o f the individual in the family has provided some understanding of these contradictions. With greater attention to gender dynamics a less depressing picture of the potential for change becomes possible. Feminist theorists can also learn however from the critique of technical rationality as domination, in particular the mistaking merely technical or goaloriented rationality for what is really rational or reasonable. If gender oppression is analyzed in isolation from other social processes and its cause located within men as m a l e beings, there is considerable risk of perpetuating the domination of the "other" that has led us to the human and ecological crisis of the late twentieth century.

Notes

1. K. Reiger, The Disenchantment o f the Home; Modernizing the Australian Family, 1880-1940, (Melbourne; O.U.P., 1985); cf., B. Ehrenreich and D. English, For Her Own Good, 150years o f Experts" Advice to Women, (London:Pluto, 1979); J. Lewis,

523

2.

3.

4.

5.

6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

The Politics o f Motherhood, Child and d~Iaternal Welfare in England, 1900-1930, (London: Croorn Helm, 1980). Ehrenreich and English, For Her Own Good; C. Lasch, Haven in a Heartless World; the Family Besieged, (New York: Basic Books, 1977); M. Poster, Critical Theory o f the Family, (London: Pluto Press, 1978), Ch. 7; A. Davin, "Imperialism and Motherhood," History Workshop J o u r n a l Spring, 1978. See, for example, many contributions to Capitalist Patriarchy and Towards a Socialist Feminism, ed. Z. Eisenstein, (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1979); The Unhappy Marriage o f Marxism and Feminism, ed. L. Sargeant, (London: Pluto, 1981); M. Barrett, Women's Oppression Today, (London: Verso, 1982). B. Ehrenreich and J. Ehrenreich, "The Professional Managerial Class," in Between Labour and Capital ed. P. Walker, (Hassacks: Harvester Press, 1979); J. Benjamin, "Authority and the Family Revisited: Or a World Without Fathers?", N e w German Critique, 13, 1978, 35-57; A. K. Salleh, "On the dialectics of signifying practice," Thesis Eleven, 5/6, 1982, 72-84. L. Stone, The Famil); Sex and Marriage in England, I500-1800, (Penguin ed., 1979); E. Shorter, The Making o f the Modern Family, (New York: Basic Books, 1975); B. Berger and P. Berger, The War over the Family, Recapturing the Middle Ground, (Penguin, 1983). Poster, Critical Theory; E. Zaretsky, Capitalism, the Family and Personal Life, (London: Pluto Press, 1976). Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, "The Family," Aspects o f Sociology, (Eng. tr.), (London: Heinernann, 1973). M. Barrett and M. McIntosh, The Anti-Social Family, (London: Verso, 1982) 110; L Benjamin, "Authority and the family." Frankfurt Institute, "The Family," 37. Ibid., H. Marcuse, One-dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology o f Advanced Industrial Society, (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964). M. Horkheimer, "Authority and the family today," in R. Anshen (ed.), The family, its f u n c t i o n and destiny, (New Ybrk, 1949). Benjamin, "Authority and the family." N. Abercrombie and J. Uurry, Capital, Labour and the Middle Classes, (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1983). Ibid. Walker, Between Labour and Capital. A. Giddens, A Contemporary Critique o f Historical Materialism, (London: Macmillan, 1981), esp. 73ff. Ibid. 5; and A. Giddens, Central Problems in Social Theory, (London: Macmillan, 1979) 100. A. Gramsci, Prison Notebooks; selections, (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1971). G. Konrad and I. Szelenyi, The Intellectuals on the R o a d to Class Power, (Hassacks: Harvester Press, 1979). J. Haberrnas, "Technology and Science as ideology,'" in Toward a Rational Society" student protest, science and polities, (London: Heinemann ed., 1971). B. and J. Ehrenreich, "The professional-managerial class." P. Berger and H. Kellner, The Homeless Mind, (Ringwood: Penguin, 1974). Lasch. Haven, and The Culture o f Narcissism, (London: Abacus ed., 1980); J. Donzelot, The Policing o f Families, (Eng. tr.), (N.Y.: Pantheon, 1979). Barrett and McIntosh, Anti-Social Family, lllff. Lasch, Culture; and The Minimal Self, Psychic Survival in Troubled Times, (London: Pan Books, 1985).

524 26. M. Foucault, The History o f Sexuality, Vol. 1, A n Introduction, (London: Allen Lane ed., 1979). 27. Reiger, Disenchantment. 28. R. W. Connell and T. Irving, Class Structure in Australian History, (Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1980). 29. For example, speakers at the 1937 Australasian Medical Congress, Medical Journal o f Australia, 30 October 1937, 764. 30. S. Ewen, Captains o f Consciousness, (New York: McGraw Hill, 1976). 31. S. Glyn, Urbanisation in Australian History, 1788-1900, (Melbourne: Thomas Nelson, 1970). 32. G. Davison, The rise and fall o f Marvellous Melbourne, (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1979). 33. J. McCarty, "Australian Capital Cities in the nineteenth century," Australian Economic History Review, 1970, 107-137; Connell and Irving, Class Structure. 34. Preston Post, 6 August 1904. 35. For example, Suffer and be Still." Women in the Victorian Age, ed. M. Vicinus, (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1972). 36. Shorter, Making; Poster, Critical Theory; T. K. Rabb and R. I. Rothberg, The Family in History, (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1971). 37. C. Hall, "Gender divisions and class formation in the Birmingham middle class, 1780-1850," in People's History and Socialist Theory, ed. R. Samuel, (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981). 38. S. Ormer, "Is Female to Male as Nature is to Culture?" in M. Rosaldo and L. Lamphere, Women, Culture and Society, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1974); for later developments in the considerable debate this formulation has triggered, see Nature, Culture and Gender, ed. C. MacCormack and M. Strathern, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980). 39. R. R. Ruether, New Woman and N e w Earth; Sexist ldeologies and H u m a n Liberation, (New York: Seabury Press, 1975) 13. 40. For labor market strategies pursued by the new middle class in Australia, see D. Deacon, "The naturalisation of dependence: the state, the new middle class and women workers, 1830-1930," Ph.D. thesis, Australian National University, 1986. 41. T. Rowse, Australian Liberalism and National Character, (Melbourne: Kibble Books, 1978). 42. Ehrenreich and English, For her own good. 43. See Barbara (with John) Ehrenreich's formulation in "The professional-managerial class." 44. E. Browne, The empty cradle, fertility control in Australia, (Sydney: University of N.S.W. Press, 1979). 45. B. Kingston, M y wife, my daughter and poor Mary-Ann; women and work in Australia, (Sydney, Thomas Nelson, 1975); Reiger, Disenchantment. 46. J. H. Docherty, The "'Emily Mac"; the story o f Emily McPherson College, 1906-I979, (Melbourne: Ormond, 198l). 47. F. Kelly, "The Woman Question in Victoria, 1890-1910," Ph.D. thesis, Monash University, 1983. 48. Mrs. Fawcett Story, "Domestic Economy in State Schools," Education Gazette and Teachers" Aid, July 1900, 12. 49. See "Stel[a May Allan," by Patricia Keep, Australian Dictionary o f Biography, Vol. 7, 1891-1939; "Interview with Mrs. E. F. Allan," New Idea, 1st January, 1903, 451. It was reported here that, after a meeting in New Zealand, Mrs. Allan was challenged

525

50. 51.

52.

53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60.

61. 62. 63.

64.

65. 66.

67.

68. 69. 70.

71.

72. 73. 74.

by a local publican to compete with his 13-year-old daughter in "making a bed, darkling a stocking, playing a tune, and cooking a chop." She had, of course, performed admirably. She then married and moved to Melbourne, raising four daughters. Argus, 4 April 1921. George Swinburne was not only an employer but a "technical expert" himself, his interest in domestic science being part of his enthusiasm for education. See S. MurraySmith, "A History of Technical Education in Australia," Ph.D. thesis, University of Melbourne, 1966, V. 2, 771; on McPherson's philanthrop), Docherty, Emily ,~'Iac, 60ft. Letter from McPherson to Premier Lawson, quoted in Emily McPherson College of Domestic Economy, unpublished pamphlet by J. Goodchild, (Melbourne, College Council, 1935) 6 - 7. "Obituary: William McPherson," College of Domestic Economy Magazine, No. 6, 1931, 5. Docherty, Emily ~lac, 64. Ibid. M. Davies, Beyond My Grasp, (Sydney: Alpha Books, 1978) 13. Fawcett Story, "Domestic Economy," 12-13.

Argus, 20 August 1907; 17 September 1909. Fawcett Stor3; "Domestic Economy," 12-13. Speakers, for example, at Medical Conferences and those of the Australian Association for the Advancement of Science, e.g., A. T. Rudd, "Scientific Study of the Child," A.A.A.S., 1909. Davin, "Imperialism and motherhood," Lewis, The Politics of Motherhood. M. Primrose, "Mothercraft not learnt by instinct," The Housewife, 2 January 1939. B. Gandevia, Tears Often Shed, (Sydney: Pergamon Press, 1978) ll40ff: Medical Congress transactions from about 1908 show some interest in children's health, but the 1920s and 1930s were more significant. A. M. A'Beckett, The Growth and Development of the Free Kindergarten l~lovement in Victoria, (Melbourne, 1939); M. Walker, "The Development of Kindergartens in Australia," M.Ed. thesis. University of Sydney, 1964. S. Hackett, The Australian HousehoM Guide, (Perth, 1916) 82. Victorian Education Department, Special Cases File No. 1110, Free Kindergarten Union of Victoria; D. Edgar, "The Educational Ideas and Influence of Dr. John Smyth," M.Ed. thesis, University of Melbourne, 1907, 261-284. May Gutteridge and Christine Heinig were leaders in the pre-school developments of the 1930s, both bringing to Melbourne the latest American ideas on child developmerit, e.g., M. V. Gurteridge, The Child at Home, the Child Growing Up, a series of lectures by the Principal of the Kindergarten Training College, (Melbourne: Free Kindergarten Union, 1934). For other aspects of their endeavour see Reiger, Disenchantment. Ibid. Vera Scantlebury Brown, unpublished speech, typescript attached to copy of 1927-1928 Annual Report of the Director of Infant Welfare, held at Dept. of Maternal and Child Welfare, Melbourne. J. Greig, Report of the School of Medical Inspectors, attached to Annual Report, Minister o f Public Instruction, 1913-14, 109, Victorian Parliamentary Papers, No. 1, "v\ 2, 1914. Lasch, Haven. Reiger, Disenchantment. Ormer, "Is female to male."

526 75. M. Horkheimer and T. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, (Eng. tr.), (London: Allen Lane ed., 1973). 76. Ibid. 77. Ibid., especially 31ff. and a note on " M a n and Animal," 247-251. 78. Ibid., 69ff. 79. Ibid., "Notes and drafts," 250. 80. For example, A. Giddens, Profiles and Critiques in Social Theory, (London: Macmillan, 1982) 221-222. 81. Barrett and Mclntosh, The Anti-Social Family, lllff. 82. Ruether, New Woman~New Earth. 83. Ibid. 84. C. Merchant, The Death of Nature, Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution, (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1980); B. Easlea, Science and Sexual Oppression, (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1981). 85. For example, S. Griffin, Made from this earth, an anthology o f writings, (New York: Harper and Row, 1982); L. Caldecott and S. Leland, Reclaim the Earth: women speak out for life on earth, (London: Women's Press, 1983). 86. Ruether, New Woman, 192. 87. Benjamin, "Authority and the family"; and "The oedipal riddle; authority, autonomy and the new narcissism," in The Problem of Authority in America, ed. J. P. Diggins and M. E. Kann, (Philadelphia: Temple Univ. Press, 1981). 88. For example, Lasch, Culture of Narcissism. 89. Z. Eisenstein, The Radical Future o f Liberal Feminism (New York: Longman, 1981). 90. Frankfurt School, Aspects o f Sociology, 137.