Human development and family science: A story of disciplinary fragmentation and kinship

Departments of Human Development and Family Science (HDFS) are a disciplinary descendent of home economics, which emerged in the late 1800s as a product of progressivism, funding tied to agriculture, and misogyny in higher education. The study of development and family joined home economics departments in the 1930s and 1940s. Some home economics departments were dismantled in the 1960s and others were transformed into HDFS. Other home economics subdisciplines separated and matured into new independent disciplines. This history is illustrated with the story of my own department at Fresno State. The loss of the home economics name created fragmentation, producing a visibility problem and a disciplinary identity crisis for HDFS. I propose a pragmatic focus on our departmental (rather than disciplinary) identities to unify us for collective action. I also propose that we embrace our interdisciplinary nature by using a kinship metaphor of disciplinarity rather than the more common territorial metaphor.