Christine Frederick
| Christine Frederick | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Christine Isobel Campbell February 6, 1883 Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Died | April 6, 1970 (aged 87) |
| Nationality | American |
| Other names | Christine McGaffey Christine MacGaffey |
| Occupation | Home economist, author |
| Spouse(s) | J. George Frederick (businessman); 4 children |
Christine Frederick (February 6, 1883 – April 6, 1970) was an American home economist and early 20th century exponent of Taylorism as applied to the domestic sphere. She conducted experiments aimed at improving household efficiency, as well as arguing for women's vital role as consumers in a mass-production economy. She wrote books on these subjects, the best-known of which is probably Selling Mrs. Consumer, which offers an early justification for planned obsolescence as a necessary feature of the industrial economy.
Christine Isobel Campbell was born in 1883 in Boston, Massachusetts, to Mimi (née Scott) and William R. Campbell, who separated shortly afterwards. In 1894 Frederick's mother married a lawyer, Wyatt MacGaffey, who adopted the girl.
In 1906, Christine McGaffey (as she preferred to spell her surname) graduated from Northwestern University and became a teacher. A year later, she married J. (Justus) George Frederick, a business executive interested in the theories of scientific management put forward by Frederick W. Taylor and others. The Fredericks had four children, David Mansfield, Jean, Phyllis, and Carol.
After moving to New York, Christine and J. George Frederick helped to found a club called the Advertising Women of New York in 1912 because women were refused admission to the men's advertising club. Becoming interested in Taylorism as applied to the domestic sphere, Frederick founded and directed a laboratory for conducting Taylorist experiments at her home in Greenlawn, New York.
She was especially interested in making kitchens more efficient for women and is credited with bringing about standardization of the height of kitchen counters and work surfaces. At the Applecroft Home Experiment Station, Frederick investigated some 1,800 different products from household appliances to food, looking for labor-saving methods of preparation and use.
In 1912, Frederick began a series of articles under the title 'New Housekeeping' in the Ladies' Home Journal (for which she served as consulting household editor) to explain Taylorism to middle-class women. These articles were subsequently published as a book, The New Housekeeping: Efficiency Studies in Home Management. Frederick's second chapter, on applying motion studies to household tasks, shows the clear parallel between her research and Taylor's well-known studies in the industrial sphere. She followed this up in 1915 with a correspondence course called Household Engineering: Scientific Management in the Home, which was published as a book of the same title in 1919. In 1917, she did some lecturing on the Chautauqua circuit.
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