This article explores the history of the home economics/family and consumer sciences (HE/FCS) profession, a field that arose from the synergy created by the 20th-century Industrial Revolution (late 1800s and early 1900s). The profession was intended to strengthen and protect the home and family from the vagaries of scientific and technological progress. Our mantra for years was to optimize the quality of life and well-being of individuals and families. Our enduring rhetoric, however, does not reference the profession's connection to humanity (McGregor, 2010), despite the urging of Brown and Paolucci (1979) to concern ourselves with the human condition (in the preamble to their mission statement).