Nancy Folbre

Who pays for the kids? : gender and the structures of constraint

Three paradoxes surround the division of the costs of social reproduction: * Women have entered the paid labour force in growing numbers, but they continue to perform most of the unpaid labour of housework and childcare. * Birth rates have fallen but more and more mothers are supporting children on their own, with little or no assistance from fathers. * The growth of state spending is often blamed on malfunctioning markets, or runaway bureaucracies. But a large percentage of social spending provides substitutes for income transfers that once took place within families. Who Pays for the Kids? explains how this paradoxical situation has arisen. The costs of social reproduction are largely paid by women: men have remained extremely reluctant to pay their share of the costs of raising the next generation. Traditional theories - neo-classical, Marxist and Feminist - can only provide an incomplete account of this, and this book offers an alternative analysis, based on individual choices but within interlocking structures of constraint based on gender, age, sex, nation, race and class.

When Does Gender Trump Money? Bargaining and Time in Household Work

Using data from Australia and the United States, the authors explore the effect of spouses’ contribution to family income on how housework is divided. Consistent with exchange‐bargaining theory, women decrease their housework as their earnings increase, up to the point where both spouses contribute equally to income. In other respects, gender trumps money. The base level of housework for women is much higher. Among the small percentage of couples who are in the range where women provide 51%–100% of household income, the change in housework is opposite what exchange theory predicts: couples that deviate from the normative income standard (men make more money than women) seem to compensate with a more traditional division of household work.

The Cost of Caring

Caring work involves providing a face-to-face service to recipients in jobs such as child care, teaching, therapy, and nursing. Such jobs offer low pay relative to their requirements for education and skill. What explains the penalty for doing caring work? Because caring labor is associated with women, cultural sexism militates against recognizing the value of the work. Also, the intrinsic reward people receive from helping others may allow employers to fill the jobs for lower pay. Caring labor creates public goods--widespread benefits that accrue even to those who pay nothing. For example, if children learn skills and discipline from teachers, the childrens future employers benefit, with no market mechanism to make the pay given to care workers reflect these benefits. Even when the public or not-for-profit sectors do step in to hire people to provide such services for those too poor to pay, the pay is limited by how much decision makers really care about the poor. Finally, the fact that people feel queasy about putting a price on something as sacred as care limits the pay offered--as paradoxical as it is to pay less for something when it is seen as infinitely valuable!

Hearts and spades: Paradigms of household economics

Abstract This paper explains why the feminist critique of inequalities within the family poses a serious challenge to conventional economic theories of the household. But it also discusses those aspects of both neoclassical and Marxian theory that are useful to an analysis of conflict within the family, arguing that the bargaining power models being developed by some neoclassical theorist are complementary to Marxist influenced structural accounts.

Cleaning house: New perspectives on Households and Economic Development

Abstract This paper provides a critical review of the recent literature on households and economic development. Three related points are developed: (1) household activities can be analyzed in economic terms, particularly if these terms are broadly defined to encompass such factors as risk and uncertainty; (2) significant differences between the economic position of men, women, and children within the patriarchal household mean that it cannot be treated as an undifferentiated unit of analysis; (3) microeconomic analysis of the household must be situated within a larger structural analysis of gender and age based inequalities and their interaction with class structure and national position within the world capitalist system.

Holding hands at midnight: The paradox of caring labor

This paper puts recent feminist theorizing about “care” within an economic context by developing the concept of caring labor and exploring possible reasons for its undervaluation. It describes the relevance of tensions between neoclassical and institutionalist thought, as well as between pro-market and anti-market views. The final section explores the implications for feminist public policy.

Measuring Care: Gender, Empowerment, and the Care Economy

How should “care” be defined and measured in ways that enhance our understanding of the impact of economic development on women? This paper addresses this question, suggesting several possible approaches to the development of indices that would measure gender differences in responsibility for the financial and temporal care of dependents.

Family time : the social organization of care

Introduction Part 1: The Big Picture 1. The Misallocation of Time 2. Time Use and Public Policy Part 2: Using the Yardstick of Time to Capture Care 3. Proximity, or Responsibility?: Measuring Parental Child Care Time 4. Making the Invisible Visible: The Life and Time(s) of Informal Caregivers Part 3: Valuing Child Care and Elder Care 5. Bringing Up Bobby and Betty: The Inputs and Outputs of Child Care Time 6. Valuing Informal Elder Care Part 4: Parenting, Employment and the Pressures of Care 7. Packaging Care: What Happens When Children Receive Non-Parental Care? 8. Parenting and Employment: What Time-Use Surveys Show 9. The Rush Hour: The Quality of Time and Gender Equity Part 5: International Comparisons 10. Dual Earner Families in Four Countries 11. Parenthood Without Penalty

By What Measure? Family Time Devoted to Children in the United States

We argue that previous research on time devoted to child care has paid insufficient attention to the conceptualization of care time. Three separate problems are evident. First, the conventional focus on explicit activities with children distracts attention from the larger responsibilities of “passive” care, which ranges from time when children are sleeping to time when they are in the same general area but are not engaged in an activity with parents. Second, the empirical analysis of activity time focuses almost exclusively on parents, overlooking the role of relatives such as grandmothers and siblings. Third, the measurement of active care time often ignores the impact of overlaps among both care providers and recipients. Our analysis of the Child Development Supplement of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics sheds light on these three problems and presents new measures of passive and active care time.

Of patriarchy born: the political economy of fertility decisions

If feminist theory does offer a unique insight into womens position in society it must also provide some distinctive contribution to the explanation of fertility decline. Similarly if forms of social control over womens reproductive capacity represent an important component of patriarchal inequality an analysis of changes in the utilization of that reproductive capacity must help reveal some of the laws of motion of patriarchy. Both of these claims are explored in some detail. It is argued that the transition to capitalism modifies some traditional patriarchal inequalities increasing the cost of children to parents and to men in particular. In developng this argument no assumption is made that family decisions can be reduced to a consideration of material costs and benefits merely that they are affected in the long run by economic constraints. Demographic literature which centers on a critique of neoclassical economic theories of fertility decline is reviewed followed by the initial part of the argument that patriarchal inequalities affect the costs of children. Reviewing a large and diverse body of literature describing societies in which elder males own or control access to the means of production 2 distinct but interrelated hypotheses are defended. These are: 1) patriarchal control over adult children enhances parents ability to enjoy positive economic benefits and/or to substantially defray the costs of children and 2) patriarchal control over women enhances mens ability to shift a significant proportion of the cost of children to individual mothers by increasing the length of their workday and lowering the opportunity cost of their time. Finally changes in these particular forms of patriarchal control are linked to the growth of market production and wage labor. The transition to capitalism leads to the genesis of new motives and mechanisms for control over womens labor power yet it diminishes partriarchal authority over adult children. Consequently it reduces the economic benefits of large families. Thus it contributes to a decline in desired family size which weakens resistance to womens demands for control over their own reproduction and modifies the traditional sexual division of labor. Both these changes contribute to the continuing process of fertility decline. The demographic and economic changes described have not led to any visible lessening of the sexual wage differential but they have improved womens position within the family. They have also undermined the economic stability of family life. Feminists must move beyond critical analysis to a more explicit consideration of the ways in which parenthood could and should be organized.