How common was it to have domestic help in America in the early-mid 20th century?

Factual Questions
1

Hi, TM -

I’m writing a book and I need some help with research. (I’m not really sure how to approach it which is why I’m reaching out.)

My book is a self-help book for helping moms reduce daily stress. One of the chapters is about asking for help. That can manifest in many ways, but the part I need help with is this:

I posit in the book that domestic help was much more common in the early-mid 20th century in America than it is today. By “common” I mean “socially understood as a necessity” and by domestic help I don’t necessarily mean Downtown Abbey levels, but maybe a cook or a laundress or a nanny or a housekeeper. I’d been told this was true, but the more I look at it the more I’m afraid I pulled this “fact” out of my ass.

I’m hoping it’s true, because I’m arguing that it used to be better understood that it, even if a mom didn’t work outside the home, it took more than one woman to run a household and that “superwoman” who does everything herself is a modern (and damaging) construct.

Anyone got anything to back me up on this? Or, at least, point me in the right direction for further research?

Thank you!

Leslie

2

Yes it was more common for middle class people to have domestic help. Of course it wasn’t common for working class people, because they were the ones providing the help. The working class maid who just spent 10 hours at her employer’s house cleaning and cooking and changing diapers isn’t going to have anyone waiting at home to help her clean and cook for her family.

3

Not neccesarily mid 20th century, but close enough, read “The Help”.

4

Thank you, Lemur866. With respect, I’m gonna Dope you here:

Cite? :slight_smile:

5

Read it. Loved it. But it was fiction. Wondering how to figure out how widespread this setup was.

6

Here is chapter from the NBER (pdf) about the number of servants in the US from 1900 to 1940.
It says that in 1900 there were 94.3 servants for every thousand households in the US in 1900 and the ration went down after that.

7

In the south very common. I was born in the 60’s. My parents were lower middle class. Both just had high school degrees. My dad was a blue collar industrial employee. We had a housekeeper that also served as a nanny. She worked for us until I went to kindergarten.

8

This is anecdotal, but some of my family lived in the south during the 50’s and 60’s and virtually all of their middle-class neighbors had a black lady who cleaned and/or looked after the kids. It seemed weird to their Yankee sensibilities at the time and I don’t believe they knew anyone with domestic help when they lived in the midwest during the same time period. So it was quite likely a regional thing.

9

Ooh! Yes, very helpful. I need hard statistics as well as anecdotes. This is perfect. Thanks, puddleglum!

(If I go to nber.org will I be able to find stats after 1940? Like I said, I’m not very good at this part.)

10

These are great! I’m so grateful. THANK YOU! (Gonna stop posting individual thank-yous now so I don’t clog the thread.)

11

Yup. Very common.

12

There is a lot of academic and serious social history work out there on household management and domestic employment. A librarian can help you find it.

The Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics will have information from the worker bee side of things (how many in an occupation, wages and hours, etc).

Definitely start with the research, then the conclusions. :wink:
(from my own memories and those of older relatives, plus popular culture sources such as women’s magazines)

From the twenties (post-WWI) through the sixties (pre-Civil Rights), it was fairly common for a prosperous middle-class family to have a “day lady”, generally African-American or a recent immigrant.

A day lady worked a half-day or full day once a week for each household among her employers, helping with heavier work. The usual pay was the hourly minimum wage, with the employer paying both halves of Social Security and supplying lunch and carfare (public transit), and often something in the way of a Christmas bonus.

(ninja’d on some of this while composing this)

13

The timing on this question is extremely important. Until the later part of the 19th century, the middle class in America was a small percentage of the population. They almost always had domestic help.

After the Civil War, the north began to industrialize heavily. Jobs increasingly became open to women. Mill towns in Massachusetts, e.g., built dormitories expressly for women workers. These jobs paid much better than being a domestic and started pulling women out of the home.

By the 1890s, you start reading about the “servant problem” everywhere. Houses couldn’t compete on salary with jobs outside the house. The more Americanized the women, the more likely she was to take advantage of the opportunities. Households tried to attract workers from the exploding immigrant population, but they were largely unsatisfactory because of language barriers, class barriers, and lack of familiarity with the changing and modernizing American kitchens.

The percentage of middle class homes with help declined steadily until WWI and then fell precipitously. The war gave even more opportunities to lower class women at higher salaries. And by then a burgeoning number of gas and electric appliances made it more feasible for a women to run a household on her own. Ironically, standards also rose during this time. If every house had a vacuum cleaner then it was expected to be a cleaner house.

The south was a different universe, since it had the same pool of cheap black labor throughout. There was little industry to attract women and only a tiny percentage of immigrants settled there.

The notion that a woman can and should run a household by herself was almost completely established by the 1920s and came after a full generation that trended that way because of economic reasons, technological innovation, and a new sense of women’s capabilities. It’s not in the least modern, if by modern you mean today.

I’m pulling this summary from a lot of reading about food in that period, but I can give some cites that should be useful.

Arlene Voski Avakian & Barbara Haber, eds., From Betty Crocker to Feminist Food Studies: Critical Perspectives on Women and Food (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005) Esp. Leslie Land, Counterintuitive: How the Marketing of Modernism Hijacked the Kitchen Stove.

Tim Cresswell, On the Move: Mobility in the Modern Western World (NY: Routledge, 2006)

Dave Walter, ed, Today Then: America’s Best Minds Look 100 Years into the Future on the Occasion of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition (Helena, MT: American and World Geographic Publishing, 1992)

Christine Frederick, The New Housekeeping (New York: Doubleday, 1926). (See a pertinent excerpt at: http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5301/)

Jane Lancaster, Making Time: Lillian Moller Gilbreth – A Life Beyond “Cheaper Than the Dozen” (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2004)

14

Or course, back when domestic help was more common, we didn’t have automatic washing machines or dishwashers. Or Roombas.

15

Though she will have other daughters to help with the kids, or live in an extended family [having grandmother at home, or living with a married sibling and sharing the childcare and housework]

Anecdotal:

In 1922 my grandparents went on an around the world honeymoon, and she popped my father out in Germany, and she acquired a German maid of all work and nanny, which she subsequently brought home with her. [Beats yet another cheesy Black Forest Cookoo Clock to dust, I suppose:smack:] that she kept, and then we kept until she died about 10 years ago. [She is buried in the family plot. She made a fair amount of money on the side renting out the summer cottage that my Grandfather settled on her in the 1950s as she didn’t need it at the time.] My mom married into the family in 1949, and ended up with one of the family houses - and she ended up with a live in housekeeper and an additional day maid, and when my sister, brother and I came along a nanny for us [also imported from Germany, as my dad was duty stationed in Germany starting when my sister popped out and 1965 when we moved back to the US and he went to Vietnam.] She went home to Germany in 1970. When we sold the family pile of rock and wood in 1970 and moved into a much smaller house we didn’t need any help though we did do a lawn care company. Mom finally got a day maid about 15 years ago at the age of 75 at the urging of my Dad.

I have traded room and board to various people in exchange for housecleaning or outside yard work at various times, and have hidden an abuse victim for several weeks ‘in exchange for housecleaning’ as she didn’t have any resources until space in a local shelter I volunteered at opened up[as if I would worry about housing an abuse victim, but saving face is important frequently to abuse victims.]

16

And having a housekeeper didn’t mean a woman didn’t do household chores, or just supervised: the work load without the “modern conveniences” was pretty overwhelming. Three meals from scratch? Every day? No wonder people weren’t fat!

And standards for a “well kept home” were likely different. I don’t know how different, but different. I suspect they were “slightly higher than what you would see if everyone works as hard as they possibly can”, as it is today. The ideal is always slightly ahead of the plausible.

It’s also worth noting that a lot more people were invalids or semi-invalids. All these chronically painful conditions that we barely think about today–arthritis, other joint problems, migraines, endometriosis, etc., were not real treatable in any meaningful way until surprisingly recently. If you were poor, you gutted it out, because it was that or stave, but if you were a middle-class family, you might be willing and able to give up other things to have help in.

17

Nor the rest of the family.

18

Anecdotal…

My grandfather’s family, around 1900-1930, had two breadwinners that were both teachers, which didn’t pay much in those days. But they had occasional help for cleaning and cooking, supposedly due to the large and busy family that was either teaching or being taught. No one was sitting around with time on their hands, and they’d rather hire someone than get their own hands dirty, it seems.

My own family, with Mom the sole breadwinner and a teacher, had a cleaning lady who came in once a week during the school season.

None of these “servants” were live-in or full-time.

19

Heck, in 1972 Maude Findlay a middle class woman with only one (adult) daughter had a regular housekeeper, for some reason.

20

For starters, it wasn’t uncommon for those with houses large enough to have a room which was kept closed, its furniture covered, and which would be prepared in advance if Important Visitors were expected; I know I’ve seen mention of that kind of practice in media from several countries, including the US. Note that this doesn’t necessarily mean the rich: my grandfather was a worker at City Hall, but with a household of 9 family members the options were a large house or pile-them-up bedrooms (the household went up to 10 people with the addition of the live-in servant).