AAFCS Family and Consumer Sciences

Family and consumer sciences (FCS) is an applied field that draws on the natural and social sciences to help people manage everyday living: food, clothing, housing, child rearing, money and relationships. Its unifying framework is the FCS Body of Knowledge (FCS-BOK). Exam items usually describe a program, lesson or client situation and ask which component of the framework it illustrates, so each component must be recognized in practice as well as defined.

Ellen Swallow Richards, a chemist and the first woman admitted to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, applied laboratory science to household problems such as water quality, sanitation and nutrition. Beginning in 1899 she helped organize the Lake Placid Conferences, ten annual meetings at which educators named the field home economics, defined its scope and outlined curricula. The conferences led to the founding of the American Home Economics Association (AHEA) in 1909, with Richards as its first president.

In 1993 leaders of the field’s professional organizations met in Scottsdale, Arizona, and recommended the name family and consumer sciences together with a shared conceptual framework; AHEA became the American Association of Family and Consumer Sciences (AAFCS) in 1994. The mission did not change: improving quality of life for individuals, families and communities through education, research and preventive service.

The Body of Knowledge is the framework that serves as the foundation for the field. It has three sets of components: four core concepts that state what the profession works to achieve, two integrative elements that serve as lenses for examining any issue, and five cross-cutting themes that name societal trends affecting every specialization.

AAFCS has since retooled the framework and relabeled several of its components. The exam specification still refers to core concepts, integrative elements and cross-cutting themes, so learn the original wording first and treat each newer label as its direct equivalent.

The concepts are nested: unmet basic needs limit individual well-being, and vital communities supply the services, jobs and social ties on which families depend. A strengths-based approach, implied by the family strengths concept, starts from what a family already does well and builds on those assets. A deficit approach starts from what is wrong and prescribes a remedy.

Life course development examines how individuals and families change over time and within their historical setting. It attends to the timing of transitions such as marriage, parenthood, job loss and retirement, to the way earlier choices accumulate into later advantage or disadvantage, and to links between generations. A savings lesson for a 20-year-old, a new parent and a 60-year-old should not be the same lesson.

Human ecosystems examines individuals and families in reciprocal interaction with their environments: natural, human-built (housing, products, technology) and social-cultural (institutions, norms, policy). Near environments such as home, school and workplace and far environments such as the economy and government shape family decisions and are shaped by them. Applying it means tracing a problem outward through those layers.

The AAFCS Code of Ethics states five principles. Members act with integrity, avoiding misleading or inaccurate communication; maintain professional competence through recognized degrees, training and certification; show respect for diversity; protect confidentiality; and take active steps to prevent conflicts of interest and exploitation of those they serve.

The Certified in Family and Consumer Sciences (CFCS) credential verifies broad competence. Candidates hold a baccalaureate degree, pass the national composite examination and subscribe to the code of ethics; they renew by completing 75 professional development units in each three-year cycle. Certification is a voluntary credential a professional body awards to individuals, licensure is legal permission to practice granted by a state, and accreditation is a quality review of programs or institutions.