Who Pays for the Kids?: Gender and the Structures of Constraint (Economics as Social Theory) Book

Who Pays for the Kids? looks at how women bear a disproportionate amount of the costs of caring for children. Nancy Folbre demonstrates the inadequacies of traditional explanations for this inequality and offers an alternative analysis of individual choices within interlocking structures of constraint based on gender, sex, age, nation, race and class. Folbre maps out the complex relationship between the family, the market and the state. She 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. A brilliant synthesis of feminist theory and political economy, Who Pays for the Kids? explains why modern capitalist economies undervalue children and reinforce inequalities based on gender and age.Read More