Please visit the Archives Reference room on the 3rd floor of the Valley Library to see the new exhibit featuring the “home management babies.”

It is estimated that 50 children served as “practice babies” for the roughly 1,500 students enrolled in the six-week mandatory Household Administration Program of the College of Home Economics from 1926 to 1947. The OSU Archives has collections of photographic prints and records relating to the Kent and Withycombe Home Management Houses, which were operated as the practice homes for the Household Administration Program.

OSU’s program was part of a larger movement in the field of Home Economics. It was thought that by establishing these “practical home laboratories” for young women, the universities could give the students a “chance to practice at homemaking before she tries it on her own with a husband” (Oregon Sunday Journal, Jan. 25, 1949).

In 1919, the University of Minnesota started a pilot program in the Home Economics Department that introduced “real life” child care into the home laboratory. The program quickly spread to twenty other universities across America; within a few years, places like OSU, Cornell, Drexel, Iowa State, Tennessee, the Carnegie Institute, New York State Teachers College, and others followed the University of Minnesota’s lead and established their own programs. These schools set up dozens of home management cottages, houses, and apartments; hundreds of babies became teaching tools.

As part of this effort to teach female students about child care, babies were taken from orphanages or single mothers and moved to the home management house. The children usually remained at the house until they were two; at that time, they would be returned to the orphanage, adopted, or, in rare cases, given back to their biological mothers. In most programs, the girls would act as the child’s caregiver for a week; when their week was finished, responsibility for the care of the child would shift to the next student in line.