Motivations
Economists have been slow to take advantage of new data on time devoted to family work, and continue to largely ignore its implications for measures of economic output or inequality in living standards.19 The inertial force of habit and tradition helps explain resistance to change.
But additional resistance derives from the neoclassical definition of work as an activity performed only for extrinsic rewards, like a wage, or as Stanley Jevons more vividly defined it, ‘‘any painful exertion of mind or body undergone partly or wholly with a view to future good.”20 Many activities of family care are performed out of a sense of reciprocity, or for the pleasure making other people happy. By Jevons's definition they should not “count”.This definition, however, does not hold. Individual motives cannot be directly observed, and the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation does not necessarily coincide with the distinction between market and non-market work. Many people report deriving considerable satisfaction or ‘‘process benefits” from paid employment, and intrinsic motivation often affects the productivity of employees.21 Many activities once confined to families have moved into the market—including child care, health care, and elder care. The once-sharp distinction between activities performed for love or money has lost its edge.22
As Margaret Reid pointed out in 1934, work can alternatively be defined as something you could, in principle, pay someone else to do (see discussion in Chapter 17). You can't pay someone to sleep or relax on your behalf; you can pay someone to clean your house, prepare your meals, or look after your child. This definition is somewhat incomplete. For instance, it leaves out studying, which sometimes recalls Jevons's emphasis on ‘‘painful exertion,'' or developing one's skills in other ways, such as getting regular exercise. These activities surely differ from leisure, which is less oriented toward future benefits.
Perhaps they require a separate category of their own— self-care as a form of self-investment or personal work.Most direct care activities, however, are undertaken on behalf of others, often those who cannot care for themselves. As Adam Smith pointed out, moral sentiments help align individual and social interests (see discussion in Chapter 4). As Gary Becker emphasizes, households often act on altruistic preferences (see discussion in Chapter 19). But altruistic preferences, in turn, are affected by the organization of economic institutions such as families and firms.
Economists have traditionally assumed that the boundaries of the self are obvious and clear. The textbook portrait of economic man making decisions to buy or sell paints him as entirely selfish—with no interdependent preferences. The textbook portrait of an altruistic household head assumes that he or she knows what all of the household members want and how to maximize their total happiness.23 Feminist social scientists have challenged such assumptions, arguing that the concepts of a static ‘‘separative self” and its inverse, a self with no boundaries whatsoever—reflect androcentric views.24
The boundaries of the self—defined as that entity whose interests we pursue—can expand, contract, and reconfigure as individuals come to care for and identify with others.25 Collective action is seldom based on consideration of purely selfish interests. Feminist theory calls attention to men's collective interests in resisting forms of change that might either restrict male choices or increase male obligations. It does not imply that gender represents the only dimension of interpersonal allegiance.