Before women flocked to the workplace, homemakers' groups thrived, and extension offices offered a steady diet of classes from caning chairs and recovering lampshades to cooking do's and don'ts. Further, extension offices host evening seminars and post tips on Web sites in addition to the traditional daytime offerings. Membership in the Ohio homemaker's group, the Association of Family and Community Education, has plummeted in the past decade from 7,000 to 834 today, said president Dolores Dove of Mansfield. She attributes the drop, in part, to women entering the work force and the competing demands on people's time. Locally, the last homemakers' club tied to the Warren County extension office dissolved in 1995.
Butler County has only a handful, and they're scarce throughout the rest of the region.
People have more money than time these days, and often, what was considered a basic living skill 20 years ago, is now deemed a hobby, said Kathy Michelich, Warren County's Family and Consumer Science extension agent. The challenge in 4-H planning, said Mr. Mains, is to find topics that interest county and city kids as well as change their perceptions of the clubs. Of 230,000 Ohio kids involved in 4-H in 1999, less than 20 percent come from farms. That's half the number a decade ago, Dr. Smith said. They may think 4-H is just for farm kids.