Throughout our history, home economics professionals in food

and nutrition have been concerned with quality of family

life as evidenced by the issues studied, the programs

delivered, and the population served (e.g., parents, teens

children, elderly). Emphasis on quality of life around 1900

was on the physical side of food in home life; this has

evolved to include social and psychological qualities as

Although an evolution of values and priorities can be traced from the beginning of the century to the current period, certain cultural constants can also be traced, which have implications for the homeeconomics discipline. For example, as Cetron and Gayle note, the onset of computers has changed the shape of classrooms in rapid order, so that future changes in the educational system will be obvious. "C

significant socially and economically, the accelerating

7. Hertzler, Ann. "Food and Nutrition: Integrative Themes and

Inevitably, the home economist will be a part of facilitating the experience of better opportunity for leisure, longer life expectancy, and the enjoyment of benefits derived from the information age. To be sure, this state of affairs is more likely to obtain for those at the higher end of the socioeconomic scale, who are more likely to be participants in the dynamic of creative change; for indications are that the poor, whose needs are qualitatively different where issues of food and nutrition are concerned, will continue in a state of need and deprivation. But the home economist's role is nonetheless evident. When Owen allows the point that "much of our society is becoming timepoor and moneyrich," for example, she appears conscious of the fact that her views about the future shape of food consumption are most likely to have an immediate impact on those socioeconomic groups for which the point is true. More generally, she is intent on making a case for convenience foods that are nutritious as well as convenient to prepare on one hand, and for continued and perhaps even upgraded nutrition education on the other. As she points out, apropos of an otherwise educated and privileged culture: "Reliance on prepared foods means that fewer and fewer people will have cooking skills and nutrition savvy in the future" (10:1217). Still less predictable will be whether the housewife will be the repository of nutrition savvy in a family in which each member eats a different frozen entree, even when that family eats at the same table. This implies that each member of a household will somehow have to assume responsibility for his or her own nutrition education and practice. And if that is true, then professions such as home economics will be faced with problems attending how to make educa