Housework replacement

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Housework replacement

• Outsourcing the Gender Factory
• De Ruijter, Treas Cohen (2005)
• Consumer Expenditure Survey
• Gendered task services
• Female Laundry, housekeeping, eat out
• Male Gardening, house maintenance
• Socialization or gender production?
• Outsourcing driven by gendered preferences, or
  performance of gender roles for spouses
• Single men women v. couples
• Spending per person (children count less)

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Female tasks

• Couples outsource less than single women
• Single men outsource the most

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Male tasks

• Single women outsource the most
• Couples no different from single men
• As predicted by socialization theory, not gender
  production

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IS PARENTING THE CAUSE OF INEQUALITY?
Good parenting in the home is more important
than anything else to a childs
future. -Margaret Hodge, Former UK minister for
children
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Pathologizing poor parents?

• Britains Every Child Matters
• Under Blairs New Labour Party
• Parenting as the source of class mobility
• Poor as failed self-governors
• TANF goal End dependence by promoting marriage

Forming and sustaining a happy and healthy
marriage requires, in part, good fortune and, in
larger part, parents possessing the knowledge and
commitment to exercise healthy relationship
skills that form the basis of healthy
marriages. -US DHHS, 2004
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Marriage promotion
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Marriage promotion
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Marriage promotion

• Using TANF money
• Bush, many states would divert welfare money to
  support marriage
• Pay bonuses for marriage
• Teaching marriage skills
• Assumptions
• Failure of marriage causes poverty
• Promoting marriage reduces poverty

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2006 Federal Budget

• 150 million per year
• Grants for healthy marriage promotion and
  responsible fatherhood
• Healthy marriage
• Ad campaigns on value of marriage and skills
  needed to increase marital stability and health
• Marriage education and relationship skills
  programs for high schools, pre-married and
  married couples
• Divorce reduction programs on relationship skills
• Marriage mentoring programs in at-risk
  communities
• Responsible fatherhood
• Counseling, mentoring, education on benefits of
  2-parent families, domestic violence, budgeting,
  job training (!)
• Media campaigns

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Marriage promotion?

• Coontz Folbre
• 1. Non-marriage results from poverty
• Selection into and out of marriage
• Available men have low incomes
• 2. Marriage quality matters
• Bad marriage, blended family, often not better
  for poor kids
• 3. Two-parent families can be poor, too
• 38 of poor young kids are in two-parent homes

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Marriage promotion?

• 4. Single moms could be helped instead of married
• High single-parent rate doesnt always mean high
  poverty
• EITC good but 3 kid penalty, two-earner penalty
• 5. Supporting good relationships is good, but why
  just for the poor?

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Culture and structure
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Dialectical theory
Possible interventions in inequality transmission
Macro economic policy, Revolution
STRUCTURE
STRUCTURE
Education policy
Parenting mentors?
CULTURE
CULTURE
Fad fashion