Family Life in the 1920s: Households, Children, and Gender Roles

For most Americans of the 1920s, the most important institution in their lives was the family. The decade saw profound changes: smaller families, fewer children, more appliances, more leisure, a new pattern of courtship, and a new visibility for teenagers and young married women. For the broader context, see the parent daily life in the 1920s; for the clothes and the prices, and the cost of living in the 1920s.

The Typical 1920s Household

The 1920 census counted an average household of 4.34 people, down from 4.75 in 1900. The average married couple in 1920 was having about 3.2 children, down from 5.8 in 1800. The decline was driven by the spread of contraception, the rising cost of raising children in an urban industrial economy, the entry of women into the workforce, and the spread of public education.

The breadwinner-homemaker model was the dominant family form. The husband worked outside the home for wages, and the wife — if she was married and middle-class — stayed at home to manage the household, raise the children, and supervise the cook and the cleaning. But it was not the model of every family. About 25 percent of married women in 1920 worked for wages, mostly in poor and immigrant households, and the single working woman — the teacher, the nurse, the salesgirl, the secretary — was an increasingly visible figure. The typewriter and the switchboard had created millions of jobs for women by 1920, and the female clerical worker had become a fixture of the American downtown.

The Housewife and the New Technology

The single most important fact about 1920s family life was the way new household technology transformed the work of the housewife. The electric iron, the electric washing machine, the vacuum cleaner, the gas or electric range, and the electric refrigerator reduced the time required for housework. Maytag began selling the first electric washing machine in 1922, and the Hoover Company became synonymous with vacuum cleaners. Frigidaire introduced the first self-contained refrigerator in 1925, and by 1929, more than 800,000 refrigerators had been sold.

The result was, however, ambiguous. The time saved by the new appliances was, in many cases, redirected into higher standards of cleanliness, more elaborate meals, and more careful attention to children’s clothing. A famous study of 1,000 middle-class housewives conducted by Cornell Agricultural College in 1929 concluded that the new technology had reduced the time required for housework by about 12 hours per week, but that the standards of housework had risen by an equivalent amount — leaving the average housewife with about the same number of hours of work she had had in 1900.

Child-Rearing: Dr. Watson and the New Baby

The 1920s were the first decade in which child-rearing became a major cultural anxiety. The old wisdom of grandmothers was being challenged by a new generation of “scientific” experts, the most influential of whom was the behaviorist psychologist John B. Watson. Watson’s 1928 book, Psychological Care of Infant and Child, laid out a strict, emotionally distant approach to child care that told mothers to kiss their children only on the forehead at night and to never hug or pick them up when they cried. Watson’s methods were widely adopted — and widely resented by the children whose parents followed them.

The 1920s also saw the rise of commercial baby food. The Gerber Products Company was founded in 1927 in Fremont, Michigan. The percentage of American babies breastfed at six months fell from about 78 percent in 1900 to about 50 percent in 1930, driven by the new formulas, the entry of women into the workforce, and the aggressive marketing of commercial baby food. The 1920s also saw the rise of organized childhood activities outside the home: the Boy Scouts of America reached more than a million members by 1930, and the 4-H clubs, Camp Fire Girls, Y.M.C.A., and Y.W.C.A. provided organized activities for tens of millions of children. The 1920s was the first decade in which the summer camp became a common middle-class experience.

Dating, the Auto, and the Petting Party

Perhaps the most striking change in 1920s family life was in the world of the teenager. The term “teenager” was not coined until 1941, but the demographic it described was a 1920s creation. High school enrollment grew from 1.5 million in 1910 to 4 million in 1930, and the adolescent emerged as a distinct stage of life, with its own fashions, its own music, its own spending power, and its own social institutions.

The automobile was the most important instrument of the new youth culture. A young man with access to a car could take a young woman out on a date with no supervision, and the petting party — a social gathering at which young couples engaged in extended kissing and fondling — became a fixture of teenage social life. The phrase “necking” entered American English in the 1920s, and the practice it described was widespread. The flapper, in particular, was the visible symbol of the new youth culture. For more on the cultural meaning of the change, see our 1920s fashion and clothing page and the related flapper movement coverage.

The Family Meal and the Parlor

The 1920s were still the era of the family meal. Dinner was the central social event of the day, and the dining room was still the most important room in the middle-class home. The 1920s saw the spread of family-style serving of food, the introduction of the icebox-fed or refrigerator-fed fresh-food dinner, and the spread of the Sunday dinner as a family ritual. The parlor was still the most important entertainment space in the home. The new radio console was the central object of the parlor in the late 1920s, with the family gathering around it in the evening to listen to Amos ‘n’ Andy, The Jack Benny Program, the Ford Hour, and the news. The radio replaced the piano as the central entertainment object of the middle-class home — a transition that historians have called the most important cultural change in the 1920s American household. For more on the rise of radio, see our coverage of radio in the 1920s American home.

The Church and the Fraternal Lodge

The church was still a major institution in 1920s family life. The United States in 1920 was an overwhelmingly Protestant country, with about 60 percent of the population identifying as members of Protestant denominations. The fraternal lodge was the other major institution of community life. The Freemasons, the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, the Knights of Columbus, and dozens of other organizations had millions of members. They were the social safety net of the 1920s: they provided sickness and death benefits, organized community events, sponsored parades, and gave men and women a regular social life outside the home.

The family of the 1920s was, in many ways, the family that would define the rest of the twentieth century: smaller than the farm family of 1900, more mobile, more focused on the emotional development of children, more conscious of gender roles, more exposed to the commercial culture of the mass media. The world the 1920s family lived in was the world in which the modern American would grow up.