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 iss Rita Youmans, former head of the home economics department at Wisconsin State
University-Stevens Point, is now helping to set up a home economics program at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee,
aimed at working with the urban family.
The changing role of the home economist has been under study by Miss Youmans who spent a month with
the Cook County, Ill., Department of Public Aid in Chicago. The study is part of a fellowship granted in five cities
across the country by the American Home Economics Foundation, seeking ways home economists can be used to greater
advantage and studying the implications for higher education for home economists.
Miss Youmans cam to WSU in the fall of 1952 to head its home ec department. She remained here until her appointment as
associate professor in the UW-Madison school of education in 1956. She became a professor and associate dean of its
School of Home Economics, College of Agriculture, in 1965.
According to a recent story in the Milwaukee Journal, Miss Youmans had been considering the need for a degree program in
home economics at UW-Milwaukee since 1964 and her conclusion was that whatever kind of program eventually evolved, it
should consider the urban family.
The fellowship study was is line with Miss Youmans' ideas that home economists must get down to the basic needs of the
people. "We have to start where they are not where we want then to be," the Journal quoted her as saying.
The Journal story disclosed, "Miss Youmans' philosophy has never been so severely rested as in the last few weeks.
Only a few days ago before she was to begin her month in Chicago, she say at breakfast reading the paper when her
vision blurred, then darkened. Two weeks later she was learning to live with the fact that she had had a freak kind
of vascular disturbance, a small clot at the base of the brain affected only the optic nerve and is unlikely to happen
again. It affects vision used for reading and close work. She can read only by viewing one letter at a time.
" 'The worst time was when I was told, " this is it." Then improvement comes in adapting to the limitation.' She'll
never be able to drive a car again. But she can walk to UWM from her Milwaukee home. Except for the white cane she
carries, no one would suspect a handicap."
One of her experiences in Chicago's inner city situations, Miss Youmans told the Milwaukee Journal that the whole
emphasis is on human dignity, on helping people build respect for themselves. The role of the home economists in
the program, whether teaching or in direct service, she said, is many faceted and is often includes an attempt to get
the children to school. Ghetto mothers, she added, are inclined to keep youngsters home for any reason at all.
Home economics need new vocabularies, Miss Youmans believes. "What do terms like plan, future, security and resources
mean to people living like this? They shop from meal to meal, live from day to day. Until now, most home economics
training has been named at middle class whites."
"When you working an agency like this, it's hard to have goals, "Miss Youmans was told by the chief of the bureau of
home economics and family improvement at the welfare department in Chicago. "You live from day to day."
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