ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that consumerism was instrumental both in homes acquiring electric commodity devices as well as the creation of inadequate income within those homes. Equally central to the transformation of the homemaker from an ideal to ‘just a housewife’ has been the entrance of privileged homemakers into the labor force. Homemaking as an ideal must be integrated with familial patriarchy. The upper class or middle class wife have different interpretations of the role model ideal reflect features of their class position within the social structure. Women are seen as increasingly maternal, caring, and the upholders of spiritual goodness. Institutional economist Hazel Kyrk noted many flaws in the business analogy concept utilized by proponents of household management. The author argues for women’s incomplete gains from consumerism through an analysis of married women’s employment, the structure of capitalism and the contradictory requirements of consumerism, the homemaker ideal and gender identity.
