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Who Pays for the Kids?: Gender and the Structures of Constraint
Contributor(s): Folbre, Nancy (Author)
ISBN: 0415075645     ISBN-13: 9780415075640
Publisher: Routledge
OUR PRICE:   $237.50  
Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats
Published: January 1994
Qty:
Annotation: b /b b i Who Pays for the Kids? /i /b asks important questions about the burdens placed on women both inside and outside the money economy. The development of capitalism has brought women many opportunities and allowed them greater economic independence. But they continue to bear a disproportionate amount of the costs of caring for children. Despite the social programs of the welfare state, parents of young children, especially single mothers, are increasingly susceptible to poverty. br br In this important study, well-known feminist economist Nancy Folbre demonstrates the inadequacies of traditional explanations for the unequal distribution of the "costs of caring" between men and women. Folbre offers an alternative to the emphasis on individual choice in neoclassical economics, class interests in Marxist economics and gender interests in traditional feminist theory. Her analysis examines individual choice within interlocking structures of constraint based on gender, age, sex, nation, race and class. br br b /b b i Who Pays for the Kids? /i /b maps out the complex interaction between the family, the market and the state. It compares political movements, state policies and social welfare in three regions of the world with very different race and class relations: the United States, Northwestern Europe and Latin America and the Caribbean. Written in a fresh and energetic style, the book offers a brilliant synthesis of feminist theory and political economy. Looking beyond recent debates on the relationship between capitalism and patriarchy, b /b b i Who Pays for the Kids? /i /b explains why modern capitalist economies undervalue children and reinforce inequalities based on gender andage.
Additional Information
BISAC Categories:
- Social Science | Feminism & Feminist Theory
- Business & Economics | Economics - General
Dewey: 305.42
LCCN: 93017207
Lexile Measure: 1450
Series: Economics as Social Theory
Physical Information: 0.94" H x 6.34" W x 9.5" (1.31 lbs) 352 pages
 
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc.
Publisher Description:

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.