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Who Pays for the Kids? Gender and the Structures of Constraint, by Nancy Folbre. New York: Routledge, 1994. 335 pp. $65.00 cloth. ISBN: 0-415-07564-5. NPL paper. ISBN: 0-415-07565-3.
The book by economist Nancy Folbre should prove intriguing to sociologists of work, political economy, gender, and social welfare. Who Pays for the Kids? is in part an intriguing work of social theory. In addition, it marshals comparative historical data to address the question "Who pays the price for society's reproduction?" Folbre's answer, in short: Women, both inside the money economy and out of the labor market, shoulder such costs.
Folbre asks why the costs of caring-for ourselves, our children, and other dependents such as the elderly-are distributed as they are (e.g., to women over men, to parents over nonparents). She takes the intellectual risk of framing her theory building as a dialogue among proponents of competing scholarly perspectives. Although this rhetorical device is initially somewhat jarring for the academic reader, it ends up working well to flesh out the compatibilities and incompatibilities of different theoretical approaches. The constant juxtaposition of voices draws the theoretical battle lines clearly. The dialogue begins as a literal discussion between neoclassical and Marxian economists, with the former focusing...