As we observed in Chapter 1, homemaking has never figured prominently in the general education of Western societies, although home life is a major source of happiness for most people. Because educational programs were designed by men, they were directed at preparation for public life — male life. Homemaking was taught at home and in some schools exclusively for women. The widely held belief that homemaking is women's work helps to explain why it has been so neglected in public education. It also explains why, when homemaking has been taught to girls, the subject has been treated superficially and technically. The deepest philosophical questions have not been engaged.

What does it mean to make a home? What does it mean to have a home? Wallace Stegner describes one of his characters, agonizing over a coming move, as she looks at “the Franklin stove which had been their hearthstone.” On it, she reads, “O fortunate, o happy day/When a new household finds its place/Among the myriad homes of earth.” A few sentences later, Stegner's narrator muses, “Home is a notion that only the nations of the homeless fully appreciate and only the uprooted comprehend.” Surely, home is a topic worthy of serious study.

Home as a Basic Need

Whether people dwell as residents or wanderers, they associate themselves with some physical and social attributes called home. Nomadic tribes carry their homes with them as they move from place to place.