Unpaid Labor

There’s a new phrase on the block—well, new as of the past few years.  (Whoever said this blog kept up with an instantaneous news cycle?)  Women who stay at home with their kids all or part of the time, watching them, reading to them, cooking, cleaning, washing, changing diapers, teaching manners, etc., are, in the new phrase, engaging in “unpaid labor.”  This (it is implied, and oftentimes explained as well) is deeply unfair.

As one of these women, I have thoughts.

My first thought is that it is interesting to see this coming from people of all sorts of political stripes.  By “interesting” I mean simply that.  Developing this observation into my second thought, it is downright odd that some of the people who complain the most about women’s unpaid labor are precisely the sort of people who don’t like capitalism as a system.  Social democrats, Christian socialists, and Catholic integralists (all different tribes, mind) are the sort of people who will complain about this phenomenon, and suggest that the fact that the Market does not remunerate such labor indicates something deeply wrong with society.  And yet the implication that all things of value have a market value seems to be precisely the sort of low economic thinking that capitalism is supposed to inculcate.  So it is odd to see the critics of unpaid labor insisting that it become paid, that is, capitalized, as if that would unequivocally make women’s lot better.  But that is still not really an argument against advocates of paying for unpaid labor; after all, the market may be evil but necessary for survival, n’est-ce pas?

My third thought is perhaps closer to an argument, though I cannot claim it is a very good one.  If anything of value deserves to be compensated for, where is the government program to remunerate me for this splendid blog?  Or, if you do not especially care for my wisdom and style, pick your own favorite underpaid artistic-cum-philosophical talent.  If we are going to insist that mothers, in return for their (indubitable) sacrifices and contribution to society deserve government support, then why not say the same for other people who sacrifice and contribute to society?

Again, that’s not a great argument; I can think of reasons why families are special.  (New people trump just about every other awesomeness out there, even if said awesomeness is as great as the Sistine Chapel; also, it can be harder to tell the difference between great art and kitsch, but it’s easy to tell the different between person and not-person.  Ahem.)

But here I think is a slightly better argument, in the form of a reductio ad absurdum.  I know one couple (out of the thousands of people I know) who from their early dates knew that the woman wanted to keep her career and the man wanted to be a stay-at-home dad.  Now, years later, they are married with (so far) one child; and the arrangement holds, and both are (to the best of my knowledge) happy.  This is not a common arrangement, but there are certainly other households like this one.  So should we agree to pay the stay-at-home dad for his unpaid bottle feeding, diapering, cooking, etc.?  Indubitably.

But let’s expand the instances.  I know several families where the man, despite being the sole or the main breadwinner, is also the cook and grocery shopper for the family.  This traditionally female work is part of what the unpaid labor folks would like to see compensated.  So in these households, can we agree that the man should receive that portion of the government check which in other households goes to the woman?  Well, probably.  But things are getting dicey now—after all, how exactly do you calculate what percentage of time goes to those chores versus all the rest?

Let’s take this up a notch.  Even in very patriarchal or traditional families it is usual for certain chores to be reserved to the men.  Mowing the lawn, taking out the trash, repairing broken fixtures and furnishings are traditionally male activities—and unpaid.  Also common in many highly traditional families of my acquaintance is the custom of Daddy Does Bedtime, whereby the man of the house (again, despite being the breadwinner) takes over the last hour of the children’s day, supervising toy cleanup, reading the bedtime story, changing the last round of diapers, brushing teeth, and putting on pajamas.  So again, if we’re going to start paying for unpaid labor, can we agree that dads who chop their family’s firewood and get young Rocky down for the night deserve a cut too?

Hoo boy, I can’t wait to fill out those tax returns.

Here’s the thing about marriage.  When two people get married, if they have any sense, they talk this stuff over beforehand.  They figure out pretty quickly who’s going to work, how much, what’s going to happen with children (if and when they come) and also what the plan is if no children come.  The couple becomes a team, and decides these things as a team, and lives them as a team.  Sometimes there will be adjustments along the way (indeed, there is always some adjusting for unforeseen circumstances); but the idea that in these modern times American women get shanghaied into loads of unpaid labor is ludicrous.  The man, in effect, by supporting the woman, pays her.  Lots of women whom I know, indeed, handle the family finances in whole or in part—and yes, I know being an unpaid CPA is also unpaid labor, but it means that IF the woman wants to treat herself, she can, easily.  We are not living in some weird 1950s dystopian simulation were most wives have to beg their husbands for pin money (which was something women have traditionally earned themselves anyway; but that’s another blog post).

That, fundamentally, is why I find the whole concept of unpaid labor weird.  It treats the woman as if she were an individual wholly separate from her husband, someone victimized by being forced into a position of serfdom, instead of as an adult who, together with her husband, made a decision—one might say formed a contract—about how they were going to divvy up their time and efforts.

In fact, unpaid labor folks, while they clearly want to restore some dignity to women and indeed to all parents, are (I do believe unintentionally) falling prey to the very sort of individualistic narratives that they deplore in other contexts.

None of this is to say that there shouldn’t be help for struggling families from the government.  Milton Friedman’s reverse income tax is a conservative version of this, EITCs are another; if you want more middle-of-the-road proposals there are things like the Romney family plan.  The progressive left has its own ideas.  Policy arguments are fun; this isn’t a policy argument.

This is an argument about your philosophy of the family, and what the family is, and what it isn’t.  And the bottom line is that if you are thinking about the family and its day-to-day functioning in terms of capital and labor, then—whether you love capitalism or you hate it or find yourself in a conflicted space between the two emotions—you might want to rethink your philosophy.

Rosie's linkup! : https://rosie-ablogformymom.blogspot.com/2021/04/just-because-volume-12.html