Where Does Work Belong? Home-Based Work and Communication Technology within the American Middle-Class Postwar Home

This article examines how the idea of working within the home was constructed and disseminated by certain business industries via mass media during the postwar period. I draw evidence from popular culture, mass media, and marketing and advertising materials to demonstrate that postwar suburban consumers received conflicting messages about the public/private dichotomy. Public discourse on the role of the suburban home promoted the reemergence of the cult of domesticity and the primacy of family life over work. However, efforts by the housing, telecommunications, and office technology industries contradicted this message to promote home-based labor within the suburban home to expand their consumer markets. An examination of the postwar American home, specifically the study/home office as a technologized workspace reveals that the growth of American consumerism advanced the expansion of market labor in the home, especially for women.