The Costs of Care
The distinctive characteristics of care work help explain women's economic vulnerability.30 Care for dependents is costly, and emotional attachments make primary caregivers ‘‘prisoners of love” unable or unwilling to threaten withdrawal of their services.
Markets can function well where many buyers and many sellers compete to offer the best deal on homogeneous commodities. But care services are often person-specific—substitutability is limited. Their value depends not merely on the work performed but also on a relationship between provider and recipient that develops over time.31Many care services are ‘‘non-excludable’’ in consumption. A mother can end her personal relationship with the father of her children, but it is difficult for her to deny him access to those children unless she is willing to pursue the Medea option—harming her children and therefore herself. Many of the benefits of care are diffuse, creating public as well as private benefits that are difficult to measure or directly remunerate.32
Occupational segregation of women and men remains quite significant, reinforced by gender norms that deem women appropriate for jobs that require service, nurturance, and social interaction.33 Jobs with a substantial “care” component pay less than other jobs, all else equal, for both men and women.34 Women may choose traditionally feminine jobs partly because these contribute to their success in finding male partners and raising children.35
Family commitments lower women's lifetime earnings. As overt forms of sex discrimination have declined, the ‘‘motherhood penalty” has become increasingly salient. In 1991, by one estimate, it accounted for more than 60 percent of the difference in men’s and women's earnings in the U.S.36 The penalty varies considerably across the advanced capitalist economies, shaped in large part by welfare state provisions.37
In the U.S.
in particular, social policies have been designed to increase women's labor force participation, with little concern for possible reductions in the supply of labor to non-market work including parental care.38 Public support for parenting is uneven and inconsistent and families maintained by mothers alone suffer high rates of poverty.39 The difficulties of balancing paid employment with the needs of family members lead to a long total work week, creating stress for all parents, especially single mothers.40Why haven't women responded to the high costs of care by choosing to supply less? In many ways, they have. In the realm of family life, they have done so through declines in average family size, increases in childlessness, and reduced likelihood of living in a married couple household. In the realm of paid employment they have done so by shifts into a variety of new jobs, most notably in professions other than nursing and teaching. Yet women continue to provide more care than men, evidenced by increases in the percentage of children living with mothers alone and a tendency to pursue educational and career paths that are less remunerative than those of men. Care provision represents an important dimension of women's identity as women.