The domestic economy and its discontents

[next_migration]

(This is a continuation of my discussion of employment in times of decline, which was too long to be treated as a single post.)

 

 

Also, don’t neglect another important potential source of financial security for a family: the domestic economy. For the vast majority of human history, both men and women foraged in natural landscapes or worked in their own homes and fields, with assistance from children more than a few years old. They mostly subsisted on their own produce; they traded some surplus products, but earning and spending cash or the equivalent was not a major part of life. There were gender divisions in labor, the rational ones largely being based on what kinds of labor could not readily be done while heavily pregnant or supervising a nursing two-year-old, but it was always understood that the labor of both men and women was necessary to family survival. In agricultural communities, women’s cooking, spinning, brewing, and chicken-keeping was recognized to be “work” just as was men’s plowing and harvesting.

Only after the industrial revolution, when an increasing number of people began to work for cash pay, was a profound mental divide created between “men’s work”—which was to be done for cash, which was then to be spent to purchase the necessities of life from capitalists—and “women’s work”—normatively at home, not earning cash, and therefore treated as less important or even as not really work at all (e.g., Flanders 2014). For much of that period, many women actually did work outside the home, but for a time in the late industrial era, it became possible for many families to survive on just one income.

As capitalist pressure to buy more and more processed foods, labor-saving devices, and other manufactured goods increased, women’s unpaid work at home became more of the extreme-cleaning variety, to the point of daily dusting. This work was regarded with even more contempt because it was not “productive,” adding nothing to the household’s wealth, in contrast to the man’s labor. The husband became The Breadwinner, whereas the wife no longer even got credit for being the bread-baker. Women were labeled as inherently inferior by virtue of the inferior labors and educational opportunities that had been assigned to them, and in the mid-twentieth century, often put on addictive drugs such as benzos if they weren’t happy shut up alone vacuuming all day. Nowadays, in most American communities, extreme supervision and monitoring of school-age children, also unproductive, has been added to women’s tasks.

Thus, we now have a situation where women who keep house, even very skillfully with exceptional domestic productivity, are viewed condescendingly as “just a housewife,” while men who do so are viewed as unmanly leeches. It is considered evidence of superior ability or value as a person to work for money, which usually does not mean running an independent business but toiling for a company or richer individuals. However, if a full-time homemaker is able to develop certain productive skills, he (let’s use this pronoun for the moment, to avoid giving the “shove the women back into the kitchen” vibe) may be able to contribute as much to a household as he would by working a low-paying job. For example, suppose that a couple’s food costs can be reduced from $30 a day to $10 a day if the homemaker does an extra two hours of labor making food and coffee instead of purchasing prepared products or eating out. That’s equivalent to earning $10 an hour for that labor—plus it’s tax-free and he doesn’t have to spend money and time commuting to get it. And, if much less processed food consumption is the result, the couple may someday save quite a bit more money on medical costs.

The situation is even more extreme when paid child care is needed because one’s child or children either are too young to be left alone or could be seized by the state if they were. Child Care Aware of America reported that in 2017, depending upon how averages are calculated, legal care for preschool-aged children averaged about $9000 to $9600 per year. At those rates, married parents with median income would on average have to pay 11% of their income for care of one child, and single parents 37%. But the actual situation is much worse in many places. In Massachusetts, average care for an infant in a center was $20,415, which would be 70.3% of the median single parent’s income ($29,020). In California, it would run $16,542: “only” 60.4% of the median single mother’s income, or 18.6% of the median married couple’s income. Even family-setting infant care in the most expensive states (which were not always the usual suspects) ran from a third to nearly a half of the median single income and up to 14.6% of the median couple’s income.

Child Care Aware provided similarly detailed figures for center and home child care for toddlers and four-year-olds. Costs decline somewhat for care of older children, but still range from steep to utterly crushing for the working classes. (What on earth are they doing in Massachusetts, where costs are insane? Just one more reason to get out of Boston while you can.) Even after-school care for nine months for a school-aged child—the kids who used to get together after school and play outdoors unmonitored until dinnertime, as anyone over 45 will remember—in the least affordable states would gobble a quarter to over 40% of a median single mother’s income, 7% to 12% of a couple’s income. That’s not even touching care during summer vacation.

And all that is the costs for one child. If you have two children, child care will be your single biggest budget item in most regions of the U.S., the West being the exception due to its appalling housing costs. Child Care Aware (2018) reported that parents with two children would on average pay $24,815 per year in the Northeast, $20,960 in the West, $20,605 per year in the Midwest, and $17,193 in the South. The minimum wage in California is $13.00. At $13.00, if you paid no income taxes at all, you’d have to work 31 hours per week, 52 weeks per year, to pay the average cost of child care for two kids in the West. For a Southern state with no minimum wage, someone making the federal minimum wage of $7.25, if they paid no taxes, would have to work 46 hours per week just to pay the average child care costs.

The upshot is: If you have a multiple-adult family and one adult could stay home and provide the necessary care or mandatory supervision of two kids during the day, supposing that was done for 45 hours per week, 52 weeks a year, that adult could count himself as “making”—earning for the family—at least $7.35 to $10.60 per hour tax-free based on regional average figures, or even more in the super-expensive states. But in fact his real hourly “wages” would be higher than that, possibly much higher, for at least four reasons. First, the two-child cost averages include families with school-age children, and older children must be supervised much less than 45 workday hours per week (you send them to school most of the year, and maybe even, horrors!, outside to play). Second, if the family actually had two infants or daycare-aged children, the costs of licensed professional care would be much higher than the average, making the hourly wage of avoiding that care higher. Third, even toddlers don’t have to be watched with full attention every minute; the homemaker is not precluded by their existence from spending some time cooking, doing laundry, mending, gardening, or other productive activities that could save money, so generate additional “income” for the household. Fourth, the homemaker will not (or should not) work 52 weeks per year because the other adult(s) will hopefully get some vacation time to spend at home with the kids.

Should daycare be cheaper, perhaps the regulations less demanding? Sure—though day care workers are already poorly paid, like many largely-female care workers, so you shouldn’t want costs to be cut on their backs. Should the government subsidize daycare, as it does in many social democracies, so that talented women aren’t hindered from participating in the work force? That might be a fine idea, but as long as Americans in a majority of states, or at least their senators, oppose it, don’t hold your breath waiting for it to happen. This makes the option of having a full-time homemaker a very appealing one for families of modest means, if at least one parent doesn’t have a career they really care about, and it is an option that young couples or, perhaps better, extended families, should consider if appropriate.

There are some caveats, of course. Employers, particularly algorithm-loving corporate employers, are contemptuous of people who have been out of the work force to parent for years, and let’s face it, that usually does mean women who have been out of the work force. Between being the ones who often breastfeed and being often less well-paid, mothers usually feel pressure to be the ones who stay home. Too much of a dreaded Gap on the Resume, and menial or gig work may be the best a woman can get when she wants or needs to work again. A mother who wants to pursue a career that is well-paid or personally satisfying will properly insist that the family take on the burden of childcare for a few of her poorly paid younger years rather than permanently sacrificing that career. The pleasures of caring for small children are temporary, as they grow up and leave, but the disappointment of sacrificing a path in life that would utilize one’s talents, that one had dreamed of and trained for, will last for the rest of one’s life.

Even if the homemaker has no such career goals, so that homemaking would be more satisfying than the alternative of a low-wage pink-collar job, it could become a trap if her (or his) spouse is not firmly committed to ensuring an egalitarian relationship. Will the wage-earning spouse recognize the value of the homemaker’s labor, even after the kids are grown and gone, or secretly regard her as a mere unproductive consumer who doesn’t deserve to be consulted about financial decisions? Will the homemaker and the wage-earner get similar allowances of money to spend as they please, or will only the homemaker be on a tight leash or have every dime spent scrutinized? In heterosexual couples, since men and women have on average somewhat different political preferences, for the spouse with income to have the only checkbook and sole control over the family’s political contributions could actively work against the homemaker’s interests.

If worse comes to worst and the couple’s marriage fails, as many unfortunately do, will the homemaker be adequately supported as she/he struggles to re-enter the labor force? Or might the wage-earner go to court and seek custody of their children because the ex-homemaker, unable to get a well-paying job, “can’t properly provide for them”? For couples who can manage it, it might be wise to draw up a prenuptial or postnuptial agreement regarding what each person’s rights and responsibilities are and would be in the event of divorce, whose names will be on checking and savings accounts, etc. Otherwise, enormous trust in one’s spouse is necessary, because stepping out of the workforce for long, in a culture where fairly high cash income is virtually required just to live, puts a person in a very vulnerable position.

At this writing, well into the COVID-19 pandemic, much has been made of the Great Resignation whereby low-paid essential workers, who may have been laid off by shutdowns or may have been expected to show up and get exposed to disease for minimum wage, have quit in large numbers, creating labor shortages that force employers to offer higher wages. That all sounds good for the working class. However, it turns out that much of that trend actually represents women being forced out of the workplace as the pandemic made child care unaffordable or unobtainable. As of August 2021, one-third of working mothers had had to reduce or quit their employment, or were planning to do so because of the difficulty of combining work with many extra hours of supervising and educating children. For women who have grungy jobs and a trustworthy partner with a secure paycheck and a good attitude, this short-term loss could end up rewarding all members of the family. For single mothers left with no source of income, or skilled professionals forced to sacrifice their dreams and goals, it will often be devastating.

The official system of state-licensed commercial child care and public schools wasn’t there for those mothers during the pandemic, and that’s adequate proof that it can’t be counted upon always to be there for them or others in future. More resilient, less centralized alternatives need to be developed. Elsewhere in this book, I observe that in families capable of living peaceably in multigenerational households, many homemaker roles might better be played by retired grandparents or other relatives—old or young—who cannot or prefer not to continue to do paid labor. Millions of households have such arrangements informally. If they are defined and acknowledged to be an important contribution to the family’s economic survival, the people involved might be treated with more respect, and more elderly, retired or unemployed family members might be willing to move into such roles as the cash economy ceases to support them.