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reprint 4 Farm Life studies and their Relation to Home economics Work (1920) Charles J. galpin The life side of the farm home will be one of the research projects in Farm Life Studies in the Office of Farm Management, just as the physical basis of the farm home is at present one of the subjects of investigation by the Office of Home Economics in the States Relations Service. Farm Life Studies will not undertake to explore the technical aspects of food, dietetics , clothing, household equipment, household work, or household management of the farm home, but will be concerned primarily with the state of mind of the members of that home. Farm Life Studies will give attention to the social situations facing farm life and the consequent problems arising in the home. While home economics work, on the investigative side, is concerned mainly with the physical basis of the farm home, Farm Life Studies will be centered on the analysis of the social elements in the farm home situation. An analysis of household situations, neighborhood situations, and community situations in such a way as to display the states of mind of the people concerned should assist in the wholesome adjustment of all sorts of human relationships on the farm. The farm home, for example, may be out of the general current of present day life, having little to do with the thought and activity of the world at large. The life of the home consequently may be so simple as to be too simple. The wants of the members may come to be so belated and backward that the home will fail to see the value of an expanded physical basis for its life. Publicity of the causes of farm home isolation should tend to remove this isolation and enable farm homes to participate in the current of affairs, making it easier for all to raise the standard of physical life on the farm. This is a reprint of Galpin’s address to the Twelfth Annual Meeting of the American Home Economics Association, Blue Ridge, N.C., June 1919, which was reprinted in the Journal of Home Economics. See Galpin (1920). farm Life StudieS and home eConomiCS 147 Farm home life is peculiar in the fact that, as at present organized, it involves an economic partnership of the man, the woman, and the child. This partnership, moreover, frequently reaches its maturity only when the farm itself passes from the hands of the man into the complete ownership of the child who, by that time, will have reached manhood . The social situation of the farm home, therefore, in many cases constitutes a family cycle which is a little larger than the unit usually accounted as a home. The grandfather and grandmother, the father and mother, the children, make up this family unit, even though living in two separate houses. The farm, owned by the grandfather, is apt to pass from entire management by the grandfather through the several stages of management by the son, tenancy by the son, possibly part ownership by the son—all within the grandfather’s life. Farm Life Studies will observe carefully this family cycle and situation; studying the child as an apprentice to farming; as manager for his father; as tenant of his father; as owner with his father; as complete owner. It will study the retreat of the father from the farm as his energy wanes; as he gives over his farm by degrees to his son; as he finally retires from farming to the town or to a house on the land. Farm Life Studies will observe the spiritual rôle of the woman in the home as the interpreter of one family (her own) to another (her husband ’s) and of her children to their father, and the father to his children. The rôle of the child as the bringer in to the family of the things of life which are new will not be overlooked. The use and distribution of leisure on the part of members of the farm home will be studied. Diaries are already available showing just when this leisure comes in the day at the different seasons, and exactly what has been done with the leisure. Certain social aspects of the location of the farm house will be included in our study. The farm house has too frequently shunned even the roadside , going back into a field for its site. The stream of life meanwhile moves along main...

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