Des Jardins Julie - Lillian Gilbreth: redefining domesticity

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Redefining Domesticity

JULIE DES JARDINS
Baruch College

LIVES OF AMERICAN WOMEN
Carol Berkin, Series Editor

A Member of the Perseus Books Group

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Des Jardins, Julie.

Lillian Gilbreth : redefining domesticity / Julie Des Jardins ; foreword by Carol Berkin.

p. cm. (Lives of American women)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-8133-4764-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Gilbreth, Lillian Moller, 18781972. 2. WomenUnited StatesBiography. 3. Work and familyUnited StatesHistory. 4. Women industrial engineersUnited StatesBiography. 5. Family lifeUnited StatesBiography. I. Title.

HQ1413.G527D47 2013

658.5'4092dc23

[B]

2012012514

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

In 1948, when Cheaper By the Dozen hit the bookstores, millions of Americans came to know Lillian Gilbreth as the doting mother of twelve children. Yet to those who knew the importance of Gilbreths innovative work, she was not simply Mother of the Year, she was also The Mother of Industrial Psychology. In the books and movies made about her family, Lillian appears to be the very model of postWorld War II domesticitya stay-at-home wife and mother, happy to bow to her husbands judgment and to devote herself to raising her family. In reality she was a pioneer in the science of industrial management and psychology, the holder of honorary degrees, an international lecturer, and the recipient of a dozen awards and engineering society medals. Yet Gilbreths story is not one of unchallenged success. In the early twentieth century, she faced the gender bias common in graduate and professional programs that were not specifically defined as female areas. Her conviction that subjective factors were as important to consider as objective ones was originally rejected by her male colleagues in the newly emerging profession of industrial engineering. And, while her husband Frank lived, the engineering profession viewed her as a helpful assistant to his work rather than as a full and equal partner in the many studies of time and motion the couple produced together. Lillian did not complain about these challenges she faced as a woman. She remained convinced that employers must consider the human needs of workers, and, in time, both political leaders and business managers would agree. During the Depression, she turned her exceptional skills to the task of improving the circumstances in which women labored in the paid work force, and later she focused on the setting in which wives and mothers workedthe kitchen and the home. Gilbreth was often ahead of her timebut she was willing to wait for American society to catch up.