Household accounts
Subtitle: U.S. working-class family economies, 1919-1941
By: Susan Porter Benson.
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 2007
Place of publication: Ithaca
Language: eng
Number of pages: 233
ISBN-13: 9780801437236
Subjects: Households -- Economic aspects -- United States -- History -- 20th century; Family -- Economic aspects -- United States -- History -- 20th century; Working class -- United States -- History -- 20th century; Consumption (Economics) -- United States -- History -- 20th century; United States -- Economic conditions -- 1918-1945
Description: "Susan Porter Benson takes readers into the budgets and the lives of working-class families in the United States between the two world wars. Focusing on families from regions across America and of differing races and ethnicities, she argues that working-class families of the time were not on the verge of entering the middle class and embracing mass culture. Rather, she contends that during the interwar period such families lived in a context of scarcity and limited resources, not plenty. Their consumption, Benson argues, revolved around hard choices about basic needs and provided therapeutic satisfactions only secondarily, if at all."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: "Living on the margin" : working-class marriages and family survival strategies; title: "Cooperative conflict" : gender, generation, and consumption in working-class families; title: The mutuality of shared spaces; title: What goes 'round, comes 'round : working-class reciprocity; title: The family economy in the marketplace.