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Of all the paradoxes in the paradoxical field known as home economics, perhaps the most peculiar is the practice house, with its practice baby. Colleges and universities that offered home-ec majorsâand there were many in the twentieth century, including historically Black colleges, land-grant universities, and Ivy League institutionsâoften had a cottage or an apartment on campus where female home-ec students could keep house. Some of them were preparing for careers in education or industry, but most saw home ec as training for their inevitable futures as wives and mothers. Often, practice-house life entailed caring for practice babies, actual human ones, lent by adoption agencies, orphanages, or sometimes the mothers themselves. At Cornell University, the students called their first practice babyâborrowed in 1920, when he was three weeks oldâDicky Domecon, for âdomestic economy.â Couples looking to adopt were eager to get thei