Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture

Motivated no longer by practical needs, but by loneliness and fear, women began to identify themselves by what they bought rather than by what they did. They bought labor-saving devices which worked, as most modern machines have tended to work, to devalue or replace the skills of those who used them. They bought manufactured foods, which did likewise. They bought any product that offered to lighten the burdens of housework, to be “kind to hands,” or to endear one to one’s husband.

― Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture