I Got The Real Mrs. Degree: Everything You Need To Know About The College Degree For Future Homemakers

Now more than ever, I have noticed a shift in women reconsidering their careers and future, especially women who are making decisions about college and pursuing a degree. Many women are changing course and deciding early on in life to stay at home once they’re married and start a family. An even more surprising fact is that 84% of women in the workplace say they would want to stay home to raise their children.

It’s time women choose to plan their future around the life they want to live instead of planning around the career they want to have (just because society told them it’s what they should do). 

Maybe I was ahead of the times back in 2014, or maybe I was just an “old soul.” Regardless, my experience is a story worth sharing with women who find themselves where I was when making decisions about college! 

I Just Wanted To Be a Wife and Mom

As a 17-year-old high school senior in 2014, I was faced with the common dilemma women today are tackling when confronted with a desire for higher education amidst dreams of being a wife and mother. Similar to 87% of women in America today, my dream was to get married, become a wife, be a mom, and tend to my home. However, until I started researching what I would study in college, it never occurred to me that there might actually be a degree that would offer me the best of both worlds! Though it had been right under my nose for years (as I later learned that two of my great aunts majored in this field of study), I discovered a degree known as Family and Consumer Science (FCS). 

I learned that this widely unknown degree would give me an opportunity to grow my homemaking skills while also offering me a myriad of career opportunities after college or to pursue part-time when I might later become a mother. 

The Unique History of Home Economics

What is this mystical degree that I discovered? The “Real Mrs. Degree,” as I like to call it, is a long-standing degree that traces all the way back to 1909 when the name Home Economics was decided on at the Lake Placid Conference for Home Economics. I learned that, while its origins date further back than 1909, it wasn’t until that time that it became widely recognized as an area of study both at universities and secondary schools. Originally falling under the purview of “Domestic Economy,” thanks to Catharine E. Beecher and her book Domestic Economy, it at first only referred to the home activities that a wife and mother would confront. 

However, in researching further, I discovered that the term broadened into the fields of science when Ellen Richards (the first female graduate of MIT) became interested in applying science to the home. After years of additions to this field of study, including the arts, science, and economics, it thus gave way to the more widely known name of Home Economics. This unique history of Home Economics showed me that the Home and Family have been prized by women as a valued part of society for generations! 

Home Economics Today

When it came time for me to choose a college degree, I learned that Home Economics had changed to Family and Consumer Science in 1994 to more accurately reflect the complexity of the profession, in addition to evolving with the needs and challenges facing individuals, families, and communities. It was around this time that I also discovered two of my great aunts went to college in the 1940s and studied Home Economics! In looking through their college yearbook, it was intriguing to see that a majority of the women in college at that time were actually majoring in Home Economics. 

After learning more about the history of this field of study and discovering my own familial ties to the degree, it seemed like fate (or, really, more like Divine Providence) was pointing me in the direction I should go. 

The Real Mrs. Degree

It goes without saying that not every teenager is thinking about marriage, motherhood, and homemaking like I was. However, in our current society where many women are shifting their mindsets to prioritize more traditional living, women who choose higher education might do well to consider a unique degree path. 

Family and Consumer Science may just be the answer many women are looking for to help them make decisions about furthering their education while still embracing their dreams of being a wife and mother. 

Not to mention, 17% of couples meet each other in college or grad school. So if marriage and homemaking are your dreams like they were for me, or even if you’re leaving a margin for your desires to shift toward marriage and family, I present the case that Family and Consumer Science is the “Real Mrs. Degree” (with or without the ring after graduation). 

Why the “Real Mrs. Degree”? Just like the original purpose of Home Economics was preparing women to run a home, FCS gave me skills through the college courses I took that I used for five years as a family and consumer science teacher and still refer back to today as a homemaker and entrepreneur. In college, I took a full course load that built upon my own hobbies like sewing and hospitality, and my passions for the home and family, instilling valuable lessons and knowledge that are still a part of my life. 

I took multiple college classes focused on sewing, pattern making, and textile knowledge. Those classes were invaluable to me as I ran the Fashion Design program at a high school for four years. Additionally, I took classes on nutrition, meal management, and quantity food production that have made me more conscious about the meals I cook, the nutrients I consume, and how to prepare food for my husband, family, and large social gatherings. I even used what I learned in my college hospitality and event planning classes to plan my own wedding, and I know those skills will be pulled out in the future for all the kid birthday parties, family gatherings, and other events I will host! Aside from all of those fun classes, one of the most unique courses I took was on consumer education, which taught me to think critically about budgeting, managing finances around big purchases, and making wise decisions as a consumer. All of these courses instilled knowledge and skills to make me the ultimate “Mrs.” as a wife and homemaker! 

Regardless of the fact that I have heard many argue you can learn homemaking skills at home or in your community (which I don’t disagree with), I can attest to the fact that even learning many homemaking skills from my mom growing up, studying Family and Consumer Science in college gave me more invaluable knowledge and a greater appreciation for the value of the home and family, fueling the need for deeper education and advocacy surrounding it! 

Through my own experience, I believe this degree takes the importance and focus of the home to the next level and empowers women to embrace its valued role in preserving and raising strong and healthy families for the next generation! Whether you work after college, get married, or pursue both, FCS equips you with valuable skills and appreciation for both paths or seasons of life – I am living proof of this! 

Teach What You Love

When it came time to decide on my college degree, I chose to major in Family and Consumer Science and minor in Secondary Education so I could teach Family and Consumer Science at the secondary level. While teaching is in my blood, as I come from a long line of educators, it just so happened that FCS encompassed many of my own personal hobbies and passions like event planning, fashion design, and creativity. I am a firm believer that if your job aligns with the things you love, it will never feel quite like a job – therefore teaching what I loved sounded perfect!

Now, even after leaving the classroom, I still use what I learned in college every day and share those lessons and skills in what I refer to as my “virtual classroom” online. Teaching is still a part of my life as I get to use my degree and create educational sewing content for YouTube, share my passions on social media, create and sell fashion design lessons for teachers to implement in their classroom, alter garments when people might need it, make my own clothes for each season, and create my own DIY Home Furnishings!

FCS Offers a World of Career Opportunities 

However, education is just one of the many career options available to women who major in FCS. In fact, FCS opens up a world of job opportunities for women who want to work in fields like Apparel & Textile Design or Merchandising, Dietetics Education, Food & Nutrition, Human Development, Family Science, Hospitality & Event Planning, Interior Design, Communications, Consumer Economics, or Financial Planning. Furthermore, those who pursue jobs in the various avenues of Family and Consumer Science will work in many different settings, such as developing improved products or services, marketing consumer products, completing market research, and providing services to families and communities. Most importantly, “the end goal for the work of FCS professionals is to help individuals, families, and communities make informed decisions to improve their quality of life.” 

I discovered that Family and Consumer Science really is more than just a “homemaking degree.” Rather than putting a person in a box like many degrees and career choices, FCS opens up a world of opportunities to work where your passions lie, all the while advocating for the home and family as a valuable part of sustaining healthy Americans!

Going Back to Our Roots 

I often find myself wondering why women's choices about college degrees and careers look so different from generations past. Why is it that the degree roster for women in college today looks nothing like my great aunt’s college yearbook in the 1940s where the majority of women were pursuing degrees in Home Economics? 

Maybe this shift is due in part to second wave feminism in the ‘60s and Betty Friedan’s book The Feminine Mystique, where she posed that women were struggling with the “problem that has no name,” referring to the unhappiness of women in the 1950s and 1960s whom she felt had been forced into being homemakers and mothers. Maybe this shift is due to the fact that for years women have been told that they need to build their life around career success and that a family will only hinder their success. Maybe it’s because women have been given a message that homemaking is not a “real job” and it most certainly could not fulfill you.

While women are indeed capable of many things, and have unique gifts and talents, you cannot, however, deny the biological differences compared to men and the fact that women are made with an innate desire to cultivate life and pour into a home at some point.

What is even more frustrating is that far too many women in their teen years are pushed into choosing a college degree that is popular or will make lots of money without considering if it will play to their passions or fit into their desired future. Not to mention that so many women often do not even know what they want to do when they are in their teens to early 20s, only realizing years later that their decision might have been a mistake. 

However, in 2024, it seems that many women are finally waking up to the lies. Gen Z is listening to millennials speak out on their regrets about career choices and finding encouragement in pursuing different options so as not to make the same mistakes.

Closing Thoughts

I could have just as easily been like the many millennial women who build their lives around a career without considering they might want to get married, have a family, and stay home with their children. Thankfully, things turned out differently for me, and I am so grateful that I was presented options and chose Family and Consumer Science as a college degree, knowing early on that marriage and family would be what I built my life around. Even six years after getting my degree, I still refer back to the lessons I learned in college and apply those cultivated skills frequently in my day-to-day life as a homemaker, as a wife, and in all my creative hobbies. If, through reading my story, you feel seen, more understood, or even potentially convicted, I cannot encourage you enough to consider a different path if you are planning to pursue higher education!

People might call you old-fashioned or countercultural, but women today deserve to know the options, and nothing is better than getting back to our roots with the college degree of Family and Consumer Science. A degree that just might offer the best of both worlds, both now and for years to come! It’s time to reclaim traditional values and not only prioritize the home when it comes to our families, but prioritize the home at the college and career level!  

If you want to learn even more about career options in FCS you can explore this Brochure created by the American Association of Family and Consumer Sciences. 

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