Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

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.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Acknowledgements (p. ix)
• Introduction (p. 1)
• Part I Concepts of Social Reproduction (p. 13)
• 1 Feminist Theory and Political Economy (p. 15)
• 2 Collective Action and Structures of Constraint (p. 51)
• 3 The Persistence of Patriarchal Power (p. 91)
• Part II Histories of Social Reproduction (p. 127)
• Introduction To Part II (p. 129)
• 4 Northwestern Europe (p. 132)
• 5 The United States (p. 166)
• 6 Latin America and the Caribbean (p. 211)
• 7 Conclusion: The Political Economy of Family Policy (p. 248)
• Notes (p. 263)
• References (p. 291)
• Index (p. 326)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Folbre approaches the issue of the unfair distribution of the costs of social reproduction ("caring for ourselves, our children, and other dependents") from a theoretical framework informed by feminist scholarship and neoclassical institutionalist and neo-Marxian models of political economy. An important contribution of this approach is its explicit recognition of the interdependent nature of human behavior, specifically that individuals often act based on their collective identity and interests in chosen groups (such as the Sierra Club) or given groups (such as gender, age, or sexual preference). Each group an individual identifies with is structured by its own rules, norms, and preferences which have evolved over time. Folbre favors the concept of "structures of constraint" over the evolution of efficient social institutions (neoclassical institutionalists) or mode of production analysis (Marxists) as primary explanatory factors of the distribution of the benefits of economic development. She argues that collective action based on unfair structures of constraint helps explain how family labor became devalued. Using the structures of constraint framework, Folbre takes a bold new look at the her/his story of social reproduction in northwestern Europe, the US, and Latin America and the Caribbean. Her examination of the factors that have led to the persistence of, as well as destabilization of, structures of constraint (gender, age, sexual preference, race, class, and nation) and of the interaction of those structures with the process of economic development, is unprecedented and fills a gap in the literature. The book is written partly as a dialogue among a feminist economist, a neoclassical economist, and a Marxist economist, and Folbre often uses humor to get her point across. This well researched and heavily endnoted volume is immensely provocative and rewarding for the dedicated reader. Must reading for graduate students and faculty interested in the political economy of a participatory democracy. K. H. Larson; Elon College