Behavior and Social Issues, Vol. 5 No.

1, Spring 1995

THE KITCHENLESS HOUSE REVISITED: A Review of Dolores

Hayden's The Grand Domestic Revolution (MIT Press: Cambridge, MA, 366 pp.,
$32.50, paper $16.95)

Deborah Altus
University of Kansas

Co-housing is a type of cooperative living wherein residents retain private

dwellings, but share some common facilities. Although it is frequently referred to
as a "new" idea that "began" in Denmark in the 1970s (see McCamant & Durrett,
1988), socialized neighborhood design is anything but new, as Dolores Hayden's
book, The Grand Domestic Revolution (1981), makes strikingly clear. In this highly
readable chronicle, Hayden recounts the fascinating story of a two-generation
movement of turn-of-the-century American feminists who strived to build
neighborhoods with collective services such as common kitchens, dining rooms,
laundries, day care centers, and the like. Their efforts, though similar to those of
today's co-housing activists, were not motivated by the need to renew a sense of
community or increase togetherness. Rather, these early feminists worked to create
collective services in order to free women from the chains of domestic servitude.
As Hayden takes us through the waxing and waning of this movement to
socialize American neighborhoods, she carefully analyzes everything from. the
architectural blueprints of kitchenless houses to the philosophical underpinnings of
the argument to restructure domestic life. That the kitchenless house movement was
ultimately unsuccessful at creating widespread or meaningful changes in domestic life
does not diminish the power of the lessons that Hayden draws about the relationships
between architecture and behavior, consumer cooperation and economic liberty, or
feminism and family life. Those who seek to revitalize the concept of socialized
neighborhood design, such as today's co-housing proponents, may find these lessons
essential to the success of their enterprise.
Hayden's book, however, is far from a "how to" lesson for those interested in
cooperative living. Rather, it gains its significance by offering a new perspective on
the history of modern housing by adding the voices of women to the telling of that
history. The importance of this addition is not to "even the score" or to equalize
head counts, but to broaden our perspective and to allow us to see that even
marginalized members of our society, whose daily lives typically have not been the
subject of critical inquiry, did engage in behavior as worthy of study as any other
group. Indeed, as Hayden shows us, the behavior of

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

I would like to thank Edward K. Morris for his helpful comments on an earlier version of this
manuscript. I am indebted to Lyman Tower Sargent for introducing me to the literature on cooperative
housekeeping. The preparation of this manuscript was supported by a training grant from the National
Institute of Child Health and Human Development (HD07173). Please send reprint requests to Deborah
Altus, Department of Human Development, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 66045.

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marginalized groups-groups that overtly lack power-is inextricably interwoven with
the behavior of those with official power. Hayden demonstrates that it is only
through an analysis of both control and counter control that we can gain a better
picture of our cultural antecedents.
The Grand Domestic Revolution outlines the dreams and plans of a group of
women Hayden calls "material feminists" because they dared to demand a change in
women's material conditions. These early feminists were horrified and angered by
the way in which women were isolated in their homes, toiling individually and
strenuously over their spinning wheels and wood-burning cook-stoves in an endless,
wasteful, repetitive pattern of drudgery resulting in nothing permanent that they could
point to with pride or accomplishment at the end of their workday.
Although they lacked the rights to vote and hold property in their own names)
the material feminists pleaded and argued and scherned to find ways to relieve
women from their isolation and endless domestic toil. They developed architectural
and organizational plans for cooperative facilities. They proposed the idea of houses
without kitchens where families were fed in cooperative dining halls from a common
kitchen, thereby relieving women of the full responsibility for one of their most
demanding chores. They stressed the economic savings of cooperative plans, not
only in food, fuel and material goods) but also in labor. Through collectivizing the
preparation and delivery of food) women were freed to do other, and hopefully more
personally meaningful, things with their time.
The passage of a century has done nothing to diminish the passion and power of
the material feminist message. Consider, for example, the almost desperate words
of Elizabeth Moss King, written in 1873: If domestic work does not become
organized, "all we can then hope and pray for is that there is another and a better
world where we shall have no natural protectors to rob us of everything in life that
makes life worth having" (King, 1873, p. 85). And, as Charlotte Perkins Gilman
dramatically penned in 1903, "back of history, at the bottom of civilization,
untouched by a thousand whirling centuries, the primitive woman, in the primitive
home, still toils at her primitive tasks" (1903, p. 83).
These words, along with those of Melusina Fay Peirce, Mary Livermore, Marie
Stevens Howland, and other material feminists, were not obscure and unknown.
Rather, they were printed in popular journals and magazines, including The Atlantic
Monthly and Good Housekeeping, and were shared with feminists in England who
put the writings of the material feminists on the reading lists of the Women's
Cooperative Guild (Thomson, 1988).
Despite the optimism and determination with which the material feminists worked
to restructure domestic life, their efforts ultimately had depressingly little impact on
the state of domestic affairs. Although a few cooperative laundries, kitchens, and
boarding houses were formed as a direct result of their work, the 20t11 century
brought little hope for those calling for widespread socialized neighborhood design.
The single-family home became even more the dominant tradition with the arrival of
the automobile and resulting suburbs-so pleasing to the American industrialists eager
to meet the ever-increasing need for individual refrigerators, freezers, washers,
dryers, and myriad other appliances.
What lessons can we learn from the material feminists? What can they teach us

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about our ability, or, perhaps, inability, to restructure domestic life? The issues they
tackled are not issues of a bygone era. Six years shy of the 21st century, we find
ourselves facing nearly identical problems, some of which are made even more
challenging by demographic and economic changes that bring with them the
enOflTIOUS, and largely unmet, housing needs of single-parent families, the elderly,
and the homeless.
Many of our housing problems appear to lend themselves nicely to cooperative
solutions. So why, then, does it seem so difficult for user-designed collectivized
schemes of domestic life to become popular or maintainable in our culture? Is it
likely that today's optimistic and energetic co-housing proponents will meet with the
same depressing outcome that befell the kitchenless-house advocates of a century
past?
Superficially, at least, the rationales behind cooperative living appear logical.
Indeed, one of the defining characteristics of consumer cooperation-the idea of user-
ownership, where the people who use a business are the ones who own the
business-makes sense from a behavior-analytic perspective. B. F. Skinner argued
in both Walden Two (1948) and Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971) that cultures
that design practices under which the designers themselves must live will increase the
survival value of those cultures and their practices. In addition, united consumer
effort should be very powerful. Beatrice Potter Webb outlined this idea in an elegant
early 20th century booklet entitled TheDiscovery ofthe Consumer (undated) in which
she discussed how "little people," or those without capital, can create big
changes-usually only the prerogative of those with economic means-by
coordinating their behavior with other consumers.
Although widespread consumer cooperation is not a hallmark of American life,
the positive consequences to be had from united consumer effort are not solely
theoretical. For example, Mondragon, a city in the Basque region of Spain, serves
as the home of a unique cooperative culture whose remarkable growth throughout the
past forty years challenges the conventional wisdom about the impracticality of user-
ownership. Mondragon grew from an inauspicious village that, in 1956, employed
23 workers in one cooperative, to a thriving industrial center employing, in 1986,
nearly 20,000 workers in 100 co-ops (see Whyte & Whyte, 1988). In Mondragon,
user-owned cooperatives coordinate nearly every aspect of life, from housing and
education to industry and banking. Is the Basque situation so different from ours that
a similar scenario is unlikely to occur within our borders, even though the potential
economic and social benefits are great? What are some of the conditions that seem
to be working against the development of widespread consumer cooperation in this
country?
Perhaps the mainstream culture's verbal behavior, with its long history of
rhetoric supporting the primacy of freedom and private property, decreases the
reinforcing value of socialized plans. Perhaps the consequences of consumer
cooperation are too delayed to be effective at maintaining collective behavior without
the accompanying supportive verbal behavior to bridge the gap. Perhaps the laws
that regulate cooperative businesses prevent co-ops from competing effectively in the
marketplace, and therefore keep members from fully experiencing the natural
consequences of consumer cooperation. Perhaps the common practice of consumer

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cooperatives to pinch pennies by relying on unskilled volunteer workers ultimately

backfires by preventing the co-ops from competing with professionally-run
organizations. Perhaps the delay in realizing profits for an initially cash-poor
organization makes hiring professional management unworkable.
These barriers to the full practice of consumer cooperation do not lend
themselves easily to solutions. Perhaps the only thing that will mitigate the effects
of such barriers is grinding poverty like that seen in the Great Depression, when
pooling resources was necessary for survival. Indeed, the boom in cooperative
enterprises during the depression in this country is unequaled.
Consider also the barriers faced by the material feminists. As consumers, their
collective power was diluted because they had no money, property, or voting
privileges. Hayden (1981) argues that the material feminists made the mistake of
relinquishing men from their share of the responsibility for domestic life. By in
large, the women felt that domestic problems were their own problems and accepted
the conclusion that men were unwilling to become involved-even though men alone
had the resources and political power to help cooperative enterprises succeed. Even
when men approved of the idea of cooperative housekeeping, women were still seen
as the responsible party. For example, Edward Bellamy wrote in 1889 that
socialized services would "revolutionize housework in America." However, he left
the responsibility for that revolution to women. In Bellamy's words, "the matter is
an exceedingly simple one. All the ladies have to do is to call a meeting, appoint
managers, draw up plans and- solicit pledges of patronage and funds" (Bellamy,
1889, p. 75). But, as Thomson (1988) concluded in his recent analysis of the
cooperative housekeeping movement, "to realize their domestic dreams, women
needed power as well as conviction" (p. 122).
Hayden (1981) also suggests that social and religious norms of the day worked
against the material feminists. She notes that "unpaid domestic work performed by
housewives in the private home was promoted as a social and religious duty" (p.
301).
By the 1920s, Red-baiting by manufacturers did in what was left of the
cooperative housekeeping movement, although Hayden is quick to note that the
problems faced by the material feminists were not entirely external. There were
serious internal problems as well, among them, ironically, racism and classism.
While the material feminists were eager to work for the improvement of middle or
upper middle class white women like themselves, they did not see the incongruity of
relying on a typically poor, minority, female labor force to fun their cooperative
dining rooms, kitchens, and laundries. Hayden (1981) concludes that "women can
never gain their own liberation from stereotypes of gender at the expense of other
women of a lower economic class or another race whom they exploit by paying them
low wages to do sex-stereotyped work" (p. 299).
Another serious issue faced by the material feminists was the problem of not
being taken seriously when discussing an area as superficially mundane as
housework. This concern was one that dogged Charlotte Perkins Gilman throughout
her life (see Allen, 1988). Gilman thought of herself as an intellectual and wanted
to be seen as equal to the great thinkers of her era. She knew if she focused only
on topics such as how food should be prepared, or who should be doing the ironing

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and vacuuming, she would be scoffed at for addressing the trivial. As a result, she
often neglected her domestic views to speak and write on topics of grander scope
which she hoped would gain her respect and admiration in intellectual circles.
Over a century later, feminists face the same concern, and possibly as a result,
they have not articulated a comprehensive domestic vision like that of the material
feminists. Today's feminists are involved with issues such as sexual harassment in
the workplace, violence against women, and reproductive rights. Like Gilman, they
appear hesitant to devote their energies to the reorganization of the home and
housework for fear that by doing so they will identify themselves with the home and
will again be evoking the view of innately determined separate spheres for men and
women, where women are the natural spokespersons for the home.
But if nothing else, Hayden'S book, The GrandDomestic Revolution, emphasizes
the point that discussing how domestic work is organized is far from trivial or
mundane. Who does the vacuuming is not merely a housekeeping question but a
serious political issue with consequences that range far beyond the domestic arena.
In the book Diet for a Small Planet, Frances More Lappe (1971) taught us that what
we put on our dinner table affects not only our bodies but also our land, our natural
resources, people around the globe, and future generations. Dolores Hayden teaches
us that the repercussions of how we clean our dinner table are just as grave.
In conclusion, Hayden leaves us with a richly detailed, alternatingly triumphant
and tragic tale of an attempt to reform domestic life through cooperative means.
Although this work recounts a century-old movement that was ultimately unsuccessful
at producing widespread change, knowledge of this movement is nevertheless
relevant to the myriad domestic problems we face today. From this movement we
learn lessons about the sexism, racism, and classism that continue to blind us in our
quest to produce social change that benefits all people. We learn how architectural
changes may be necessary but are clearly insufficient to restructure domestic life.
We learn that consumer cooperation may be a step towards economic liberty but that
marginalized groups cannot alone be expected to change the machinery of society that
keeps them disenfranchised. That those of us interested in social change study the
lessons of this movement to restructure domestic life, with all its voices, may be a
prerequisite to our being successful change agents.

REFERENCES
Allen, P. W. (1988). Building domestic liberty. Amherst: University of Massachussets.
Bellamy, E. (1889). A vital domestic problem: Household service reform. Good Housekeeping, lOy
74-77.
Gilman, C. P. (1903; 1972). The Home.' Its work and influence. Urbana: University of Illinois.
Gilman, C. P. (1910). The housewife. Forerunner, 1, 18.
Hayden, D. (1981). The grand domestic revolution. Cambridge, MA: MIT.
King, E. M. (1873). Cooperative housekeeping. Contemporary Review, 23, 66-91.
Lappe,F. M. (1971). Diet for a small planet. New York: Ballantine.
McCamant, K., & Durrett, C. (1988). Cohousing.· A contemporary approach to housing ourselves.
Berkeley, CA: Habitat.
Skinner. B. F. (1948; 1976). Walden Two. New York: Macmillan.
Skinner. B. F. (1971). Beyond freedom and dignity. New York: Knopf.

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Thomson, A. (1988). Domestic drudgery will be a thing of the past: Co-operative women and the
reform of housework. In S. Yeo (Ed.), New views of cooperation (pp. 108-127). London:
Routledge.
Webb, B. P. (undated). Tile discovery of the consumer. Washington, D. C.: Cooperative League of
the USA.
Whyte, W. F., & Whyte, K. K. (1991). Making Mondragon: The growth and dynamics of the worker
cooperative complex. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University.

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