Social rationalization of living and housework in Germany and the United States in the 1920s

Because the idea of economic rationalization found its strongest promoters in the US and Germany during the 1920s, it makes sense to compare the two countries and to ask how the idea of economic rationalization was transferred into other areas of society, such as the private sphere of families and their homes. The article draws comparisons in a number of different areas, such as housing policy, the education of taste, domestic cleanliness, and the structure of reformers' ideas. In both countries special associations and journals were founded to instruct housewives, and reformers idealized a “classic” family pattern that centered on individual households with gender division of labor but fewer children. The social rationalization of people's daily lives in both countries was not an easily accomplished process, nor was it carried out sucessfully in all the areas targeted by reformers.