Daytime Radio Programming for the Homemaker 1926‐1956

Long imprisoned within the four walls of her kitchen, as were millions of her sisters in suburban cottages and city apartments, she drifted through her traditional historic role, remaining prosaically at home and living through the old monotony of caring for husband, house, and family. Allowed to vote for the first time only six years before, the average woman of 1926 still did all her own work, confinedin a colorless, dreary, unelectrified kitchen-confinednot merely physically, but mentally. Her contacta each day with those outside her home circle were necessarily brief and hurried. The very nature of her work confined and encompassed her, never for an instant allowing her to escape from its burden. In a day in which almost all foods were prepared in the kitchen from scratch, and in which the wash was boiled and most clothing still handmade, the average American woman was too busy to reach out for new contacts or, in fact, to feel the need for them. With an unconscious philosophic acceptance, she took life as she found it, but not without the toll of an unexpressed dissatisfaction. But then came the housewife’s electronic liberator: radio’