Please join us for a Family in America Capitol Hill Symposium, cosponsored with the Front Porch Republic, a panel discussion of the topic:
“Rediscovering the Home Economy”
Friday, March 27, 2015, 11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.
The Capitol Skyline Hotel, 10 I (eye) St. Southwest, Washington, D.C.
The American Home Economics Association organized in 1908. Through laws designed to revive rural America (Smith-Lever Extension Act of 1914) and promote the family (Smith-Hughes Vocational Training Act of 1917), the discipline became the favored child of the Federal government, reaching its apogee during the 1950s. During the 1960s and ‘70s, however, Home Economics came under attack by feminists and others, and the discipline essentially imploded.
In the second decade of the 21st century, though, a new vision of the home economy is rising. Home businesses, home schooling, home gardens—around the U.S., movements are brewing. Americans are increasingly dissatisfied with big, corporate, and remote, and are instead looking for ways to make their homes into vibrant economic centers once again.
Our tax codes and legal system have not yet caught up, stuck in the “bigger is better” mantra that arguably enervated the old Home Economics and that has otherwise let us down. How might we go about crafting a new public policy? How might the errors of the old Home Economics be avoided? And what would a policy that supports the 21st-century home and family as economic centers even look like?
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Featuring
Shannon Hayes
(Author of Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domesticity from a Consumer Culture)
Mark T. Mitchell
(Author of The Politics of Gratitude and co-founder of The Front Porch Republic)
Gracy Olmstead
(Associate Editor at The American Conservative)
Allan Carlson
(Editor at The Family in America)
Free Panel and Lunch: To Register or for more information, contact Nicole King at (815) 742-4387 or Nicole@profam.org
