Cheaper By The Dozen
55 pages • 1-hour read
Frank B. Gilbreth Jr, Ernestine Gilbreth CareyCheaper By The Dozen
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Key Figures
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of sexism, and racism.
Frank Bunker Gilbreth Jr. and Ernestine Moller Gilbreth Carey (Co-Authors)
Frank Gilbreth Jr. (1911—2001) and his sister Ernestine Gilbreth Carey (1908—2006) are the co-authors of Cheaper by the Dozen, shaping the memoir’s humorous and affectionate tone and blending their perspectives into one cohesive authorial voice. Gilbreth Jr., an American journalist and author, graduated from the University of Michigan and served as a US Navy officer in World War II before beginning a long career as a columnist for Charleston’s Post and Courier. Carey, a graduate of Smith College, worked as a department-store buyer and manager in New York before her literary career, a professional background that aligned with the expanding roles for women in mid-century America.
Their collaboration was part of a postwar boom in popular memoirs that translated complex historical legacies into accessible family narratives. The siblings write in a clear, witty, and reportorial style, memorializing their unconventional parents and making sense of a childhood that doubled as a real-world laboratory for scientific management. Their observant approach renders their father’s eccentricities and their mother’s quiet strength with both comedy and respect.
Gilbreth Jr. and Carey narrate the family’s story with the central idea that efficiency and scientific method can coexist with, and even enhance, affection, play, and learning. The book presents the Gilbreth household not as a rigid, joyless factory, but as a dynamic and loving experiment. The authorial purpose, as stated in the foreword, is to capture a specific period: “This book is about the Gilbreth family before Dad died” (xi). By focusing on this era, the authors preserve their parents’ professional legacy while demystifying their technical innovations, connecting their groundbreaking ideas in motion study to the everyday realities of family life.
The Gilbreth siblings also highlight their mother’s leadership and the application of motion study within the home. Where Frank provided the spectacle, Lillian often provided the emotional insight. The authors focus on their mother’s resilience, especially in the years after Frank’s death in 1924, underscoring the immense labor required to manage both a family and a pioneering engineering firm.
The book presents the home as a proving ground for a more humane version of scientific management. In her preface to a later edition, Carey explains that her parents used family anecdotes as a “means of clarifying, dramatizing, and humanizing their courageous mutual fields of work” (xiii). Both authors’ purpose is to strike a balance between the comedic chaos of life with 12 children and the serious legacy of her parents’ partnership.
Frank Bunker Gilbreth (Dad)
Frank Bunker Gilbreth Sr. (1868—1924) is the larger-than-life central figure of Cheaper by the Dozen, an industrial engineer and pioneer of motion study whose eccentric genius animates the memoir. Rising from a bricklayer to a world-renowned contractor and consultant, Frank was a key figure in the Progressive-Era movement of scientific management (see Background). Alongside his wife, Lillian, he developed time-and-motion study, using film to analyze and improve workflows in factories and operating rooms. His work emphasized improving worker welfare and ergonomics, which distinguished his methods from the more time-focused and less people-oriented approach of his contemporary, Frederick Winslow Taylor.
Frank is portrayed as a showman and a disciplinarian who treated his home as the ultimate laboratory for his theories. The memoir is structured around anecdotes of him applying motion-study principles to domestic life, from filming his children washing dishes to awarding contracts for chores on a low-bid basis and even timing his own shaving routine with two brushes. These episodes demonstrate his core belief that the principles of efficiency were universally applicable. He famously used a family assembly call, a loud whistle that summoned all 12 children in seconds, illustrating his flair for dramatic, yet practical, systems.
The book also reveals Frank to have been a man of deep affection and playful humor. His public spectacles in the family’s Pierce Arrow automobile, which he nicknamed “Foolish Carriage,” provide some of the book’s most memorable scenes. When a bystander once asked how he fed his large family, he delivered his signature line and the book’s title: “Well, they come cheaper by the dozen, you know” (18). This remark captures his blend of theatricality and pride. The book portrays him as complex in other ways as well. For example, he was progressive in his attitudes about women’s intellect and educational ambitions, viewing his wife as an equal partner professionally and eager for all his daughters to attend college. However, he also held conservative ideas about sexuality and the casually racist attitudes of his time. The memoir portrays Frank entertaining his family with “minstrel shows” (169) and describes how his traditional views clashed with the emerging youth culture of the Jazz Age and his daughters’ desires for modern clothes and social freedoms.
His sudden death from a heart attack in 1924 concluded the era of his charismatic leadership but cemented his legacy. Through the loving, comical portrayal by his children, Frank is immortalized as a technical innovator and an unforgettable father whose methods were inseparable from his love for his family.
Lillian Evelyn Gilbreth (Mother)
Dr. Lillian Gilbreth (1878—1972) is the steady, intellectual heart of Cheaper by the Dozen. An accomplished psychologist and industrial engineer, she was a pioneering American professional who earned her PhD from Brown University in 1915 and was later dubbed the “first lady of engineering.” As her husband’s partner, she was instrumental in developing motion study, bringing a crucial focus on psychology and human factors to the field. She argued that worker well-being was essential to productivity, a perspective that infused their work with a humanity often lacking in early scientific management.
In the memoir, she is the calm, wry counterweight to her husband’s boisterous showmanship. Where Frank designed systems, Lillian managed the people within them, designing humane workflows like the Family Council to give the children a voice in household governance. The authors highlight her unique ability to manage a chaotic home with quiet effectiveness, noting, “Mother was a psychologist. In her own way, she got even better results with the family than Dad” (15). Lillian mediated between Frank’s rigid efficiency and the children’s needs for autonomy and nurture, embodying the book’s claim that domestic management and industrial research are intellectually continuous.
After Frank’s sudden death, with quiet determination, Lillian took over Gilbreth, Inc., continuing the consulting work, and kept her 12 children together, all while becoming a leading figure in her field. This transition reveals her profound resilience and transforms her from a partner into the family’s sole anchor. The book’s dedication, “To Mother who reared twelve only children” (vii), underscores her commitment to seeing each child as an individual, a testament to her psychological insight.
Ultimately, Lillian’s legacy extends far beyond the memoir. By successfully navigating the male-dominated world of engineering and raising her family alone, she became an inspirational model for generations of women in technical fields. The book immortalizes her as a brilliant partner, a loving parent, and as a symbol of grace, stability, and quiet strength.
The 12 Gilbreth Children
The 12 Gilbreth children—Anne, Mary, Ernestine, Martha, Frank Jr., William, Lillian, Frederick, Daniel, John, Robert, and Jane—function as both the subjects of their parents’ domestic experiments and the collective narrative chorus of the memoir. Born between 1905 and 1922, they were raised during the transition from the Progressive Era to the Jazz Age, and their lives serve as case material for applying motion study to the home. Their experiences with chores, education, and social life become humorous and telling examples of their parents’ theories in action.
The children were organized into a self-governing body through the Family Council, where they voted on household rules, purchasing decisions, and even the acquisition of a family dog. This structure shows their parents’ method of teaching responsibility at scale. Their home was an educational laboratory where they learned touch typing on a keyboard with blank keys, absorbed foreign languages from Victrola records played during bath time, and studied Morse code painted on the walls. These activities illustrate the Gilbreth philosophy of turning “unavoidable delay” (23) into productive learning.
As they grew older, the children’s engagement with modern youth culture—dating, bobbed hair, and the desire for silk stockings—created the primary source of conflict in the family. Their clashes with their father’s old-fashioned sensibilities generated both humor and genuine tension, as when Anne complained of the identical coats they wore in the car: “these damned, damned dusters. They look just like uniforms” (20). After their father’s death in 1924, the siblings’ teamwork and shared sense of duty were essential to sustaining the household under their mother’s leadership, underscoring their resilience and collective agency.
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