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Who Pays for the Kids? Gender and the Structures of Constraint.
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1994
Year
Women EmpowermentState SpendingSocial SciencesIntergenerational EquityGender IdentityGender StudiesGender EqualityEconomic InequalityHealth SciencesSocio-economic IssueSocial InequalityChild Well-beingFeminist EconomicsFeminist TheorySocial SpendingLabor EconomicsChildren's RightHousehold LaborFamily EconomicsGender DevelopmentSociologyGender EconomicsUnpaid LabourSocial PolicyUnpaid Work
The division of social reproduction costs is paradoxical: women increasingly work paid labor yet still perform most unpaid housework and childcare, birth rates have fallen yet mothers often support children alone, and state spending—though blamed on markets or bureaucracy—provides many substitutes for family transfers. The book explains how this paradoxical situation of gendered costs of social reproduction has arisen. It offers an alternative analysis based on individual choices within interlocking structures of constraint such as gender, age, sex, nation, race, and class. The book is titled “Who Pays for the Kids?”.
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.