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Making Time: Lillian Moller Gilbreth -- A Life Beyond "Cheaper by the Dozen" |
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Author:
Jane Lancaster
By Northeastern
Average Customer Rating:  
List Price: $27.95
Our Price: $22.39
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Product Description
Readers of Cheaper by the Dozen remember Lillian Moller Gilbreth (1878-1972) as the working mom who endures the antics of not only twelve children but also an engineer husband eager to experiment with the principles of efficiency -- especially on his own household.
What readers today might not know is that Lillian Gilbreth was herself a high-profile engineer, and the only woman to win the coveted Hoover Medal for engineers. She traveled the world, served as an advisor on women's issues to five U.S. presidents, and mingled with the likes of Eleanor Roosevelt and Amelia Earhart. Her husband, Frank Gilbreth, died after twenty years of marriage, leaving her to raise their eleven surviving children, all under the age of nineteen. She continued her career and put each child through college. Retiring at the age of ninety, Lillian Gilbreth was the working mother who "did it all."
Jane Lancaster's spirited and richly detailed biography tells Lillian Gilbreth's life story-one that resonates with issues faced today by many working women. Lancaster confronts the complexities of how one of the twentieth century's foremost career women could be pregnant, nursing, or caring for children for more than three decades.
Yet we see how Gilbreth's engineering work dovetailed with her family life in the professional and domestic partnership that she forged with her husband and in her long solo career. The innovators behind many labor-saving devices and procedures used in factories, offices, and kitchens, the Gilbreths tackled the problem of efficiency through motion study. To this Lillian added a psychological dimension, with empathy toward the worker. The couple's expertise also yielded the "Gilbreth family system," a model that allowed the mother to be professionally active if she chose, while the parents worked together to raise responsible citizens.
Lancaster has woven into her narrative many insights gleaned from interviews with the surviving Gilbreth children and from historical research into such topics as technology, family, work, and feminism. Filled with anecdotes, this definitive biography of Lillian Gilbreth will engage readers intrigued by one of America's most famous families and by one of the nation's most successful women.
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Mercy maude, what a biography!, 2006-06-08
"This is funny, you might like it."
That suggestion from a long-ago English teacher introduced me to a book called "Cheaper By The Dozen," which in turn kicked off a lengthy fascination with the Gilbreth family and their other books. Along the way, I got a taste of the fact that Lillian Moller Gilbreth was among the more important women of her generation, up there with Marie Curie and Eleanor Roosevelt. But, as other Gilbreth-philes surely know, her children's writings only hinted at that importance, concentrating instead on her role as the family matriarch. This, the first full-length biography not written by a family member, is therefore a welcome addition to the already sizeable collection of books about the Gilbreths.
Jane Lancaster's research is very impressive, as is her ability to overcome the surviving Gilbreth children's noted concern for their privacy. Through over a century's worth of private letters and papers, she provides a surprisingly vivid look at the family you thought you knew as a kid. More importantly, she provides a well-rounded look at Lillian Gilbreth, who even in early life was not nearly the demure introvert so often portrayed elsewhere.
Though very much a product of her 19th century upper crust California childhood, she was quite independent minded from the beginning, as reflected in her decision to go to college, get married and move East while most of her siblings never left home. A lifelong Republican and a close friend of Herbert Hoover, she was nonetheless an early and effective advocate of workplace safety regulations, paid breaks, eight-hour workdays and, of course, women's right to work outside the home. (Oddly, Lancaster makes no mention of Gilbreth's views on women's suffrage, by far the most prominent feminist issue of the era.) In earning a PhD, she overcame not only sexism and the responsibilities of a large family, but a "lost" dissertation as well.
There are also more stories of the children, although few of them are as lighthearted as the ones you already know. Chances are you'd already figured out that "Cheaper By The Dozen" and "Belles On Their Toes" were a couple of idealized memoirs, but if not, prepare to have your bubble burst! Lillian's long absences from home after Frank's death were quite hard on some of the younger children, and Lancaster suggests (without going into much detail) that many of their childhood memories were not all that rosy. Still, Lillian's heroic role in keeping the large family together through hard times comes through everywhere.
I do find Lancaster's thesis - that Mrs. Gilbreth's reputation was shortchanged through her simplistic portrayal in "Cheaper" - slightly unfair. As at least four generations of middle-schoolers know, that book ends with Mother choosing to soldier on with Dad's business after his death and to continue raising all her children on her own. That was no small undertaking for a woman in 1924 or for a single parent of eleven children in any era. (If anything, it gives her slightly more credit than is due: Lancaster reveals here that she briefly sent one daughter to live with her grandmother in California.) The admittedly less-remembered "Belles On Their Toes" and "Time Out For Happiness" are both loaded down with accolades for her achievements both at home and professionally. Also, engineering is not like music, sports, art, or literature - the geniuses of the field, male or female, are generally remembered only by people who practice it. Still, Lancaster does have a point that this pioneering giant of her profession is too often remembered only as a doting mother. And she's done a great job of helping to change that.
Single Mom, Eleven Children - WOW!, 2005-08-24
When you think of Lillian (Cheaper by the Dozen) Gilbreth you can help but think of her more as a mother than anything else. The movie presented a story of a wonderful mother, but none the less, just a mother. As is often the case reading the book gives one a much better, much more complete story of her life.
You don't think of a female engineer from her time. Engineering was something that a man did. Yet she was an engineer of some reknown. And being left after her husband's death with eleven children under nineteen she had to face many of the same problems that women have to face today.
To see how she faced them so many years ago is enlightning. Just to see that all of that many children graduated from college is rather amazing even in our world.
 Super Champ, 2009-10-25
This book is about a true super champ worthy of admiration - Lillian Gilbreth.(.... and you are going - who?).
Here is what makes Lillian Gilbreth great - and let each item I list below, compound on each other.
1. Mother of 12 (13 actually, and one child died young)
So? You say to yourselves. Folks of our grandparents` generation and before had large families. What is the big deal? But, can we please all acknowledge, 12 children! I thinking raising a couple of children saps time and energy. Let alone a dozen (a connection coming up with the word 'dozen')
2. PhD in Industrial Psychology
So? You say to yourselves. We know plenty of women who have a PhD. How about this, then? First woman ever to get a PhD in Industrial psychology? She was born in the late 1800s. She got her PhD, just when psychology was taking off. So was Industrialization. She was a pioneer that combined the two fields. And this was all at a time before women could even vote in the U.S.!
3. Partner in her husband's consulting firm.
So what? You say to yourselves. Plenty of us are consultants or run our own business. Well, her husband Frank Gilbreth died suddenly of a heart attack in his mid fifties. The third day after his death, she had to take a ship to Europe (dressed in black) to deliver a series of lectures on Industrial Engineering on his behalf. She outlived her husband by 50 years and became one of the foremost women in the field of Industrial Engineering
4. She was a rival to Fredrick Taylor.
Yes that Fredrick Taylor. The guy we learned about. The stop watch - time and motion study king.
Whereas Taylor was all about squeezing out productivity out of the worker, maximize profits for the firm, the workers health be damned; Gilbreth was focused on how the worker did his job, so that he was both effective and did not injure himself. She spent most of her latter career trying to unify these two rival camps
5. She is the mother of 'ergonomics'
Before the term ergonomics was invented and now the biggest currency in management (think of carpel tunnel syndrome, repetitive motion injury etc), she already laid the foundation for it in a psychology based, engineering based, scientific way
6. She received nearly 20 honorary doctorates from the major universities Standford, Harvard etc
7. Her children all grew up to be fine citizens and professionals One of her sons and daughters teamed up to write a biography. Turns out that they are one funny family as well. So here is the connection. Their book 'Cheaper by the Dozen' became an all time classic children's biography. It is read in schools to this day. Funny riotous read.
8. This book was later made into a movie, Cheaper by the Dozen. And then remade recently again starring Steve Martin (The Steve Martin movie did not stay true to the biography)
9. Her contributions were so significant that she was honored with a U.S. Postage stamp with her picture on it
10. At her peak in the late 50s she was compared on par with Eleanor Roosevelt and Marie Curie!
Mother of 12, first PhD in Industrial Psychology, creator of ergonomics, all in a pre-modern era.
Lillian Gilbreth - super champ.
I hope you agree.
The Gilbreth team..., 2009-06-28
Frank and Lillian Gilbreth were the husband and wife consulting team that inspired the book and movie, Cheaper by the Dozen. In fact, there never were a dozen living children. (The second child, a girl, died in childhood from diptheria and a thirteenth was still born. But the Gilbreths always referred to their brood as a "dozen")
Frank had no education beyond high school and began his "career" as an apprentice bricklayer. That every bricklayer had his own technique fascinated him and led him to search for the "best way" the lay brick. He became a self-declared "engineer" in the emerging scientific management movement that Frederick Taylor pioneered.
In contrast, Lillian was well educated with a doctorate in psychology. She was the brains behind the consulting team comprised by Frank, her, and assistants. She was a remarkable woman who endured the discrimination against professional women in the early 20th century to become a real icon of success for the generation of women engineers who came after her. Her story, told in this book by Jane Lancaster, is an inspiration. I would liked to have known her.
A more complex look at the "Cheaper by the Dozen" mother, 2009-04-15
This book was first written as a thesis. It shows. It is very complete with footnotes but unlike many a college thesis, it is very entertaining. It shows just what a remarkable women Lillian Moller Gilbreth was. She was a true feminist in the best sense of the word. This book fills in a lot of holes left by the books by her children. The Gilbreth's were helped a great deal in their child-rearing primarily by Mr. Gilbreth's mother. Mrs. Gilbreth was actually supposed to travel with her husband to the conferences to Prague and London in 1924. This book will shatter any notions you may have about the family from reading "Cheaper" and "Belles" so those who want to keep the picture they formed of the family from those two books should not read this book. The "real" Lillian Moller Gilbreth was much more interesting and complicated than we ever thought. This book just increased by many-fold my admiration of this woman.
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 305
EAN: 9781555536527
ISBN: 1555536522
Label: Northeastern
Manufacturer: Northeastern
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 428
Publication Date: 2006-05-31
Publisher: Northeastern
Studio: Northeastern |
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