In this week's episode, historian April Holm talks with co-hosts Nichols and Newman about Cheaper by the Dozen, a 1948 bestseller whose air of wholesome family fun has gradually shifted it into the children's literature category. Written by Frank Gilbreth Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey, it's a comedy memoir of being raised by Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, pioneering time-motion study experts who also had twelve children, whom they subjected to a regime of time-motion optimization.
Historian April Holm (author of A Kingdom Divided: Evangelicals, Loyalty, and Sectionalism in the Civil War Era) considers the experience of rereading the book as an adult and finding jaw-droppingly dark overtones (animal torture and child exploitation, just to name two). What does the book—and other examples of the fun-despotic-dad genre, like Life With Father (1936) and Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House (1946)—have to tell us about the (somewhat rickety) construction of American nostalgia?
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