Nina Leen
1947, 16 June (published)
Housewife Marjorie McWeeney amid symbolic display of her week's housework

Gelatin silver print
Internet - Original source ill-defined
LIFE magazine
 
“Woman's Dilemma,” Life, June 16, 1947, p. 105] depicts part of a housewifes labour during her 100-long-week. This was featured in a window display at Bloomingdales.
 
Her work included “35 beds to be made, 750 items of glass & china, 400 pieces of silverware to wash, 174 lbs. of food to prepare, some of 250 pieces of laundry.on a line, & a ringer washing machine”-that plus paying attention to her children during the 70+ hours a week in which they are awake."
 
From the LIFE magazine issue:
 
Actually Marjorie's chores are much lighter than they would have been a few generations ago. She cleans with machinery propelled by electricity, she uses food prepared in canneries, she buys clothes factory-made to fit every member of the family. But her jobs, though relieved of old-time drudgery, have none of the creative satisfactions of home baking, home preserving, home dressmaking. And, because her family unit is small with no aunts or cousins in the household, all the time she saves from housework must go into supervision of her children. Unless she makes special arrangements with a baby-sitter, she has no relief from child care.
 
Many women in Marjorie's position feel that this is a life of drudgery, that it is not good for Marjorie, a graduate of a junior college, to stay with small children long, continuous hours. Marjorie herself has no desire to work outside. Because as an individual she likes the job that she does, she has no problem right now. Like most busy young housewives, however, she gives little thought to the future-to satisfactory ways of spending the important years after her children have grown up and left home.
 
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