Thread by @lawprofblawg

I was, for no particular reason, thinking today about an ENTIRE AND VAST LITERATURE on household reproduction that encompasses many voices across many fields.

#lawtwitter #AcademicChatter

A LOT of those articles, books, and essays are written by WOMEN. So I imagine if I were, say, citing literature in my essay, I would want to be careful to ensure I encompassed it fairly. I might also look at who I am tending to cite in my footnotes.

As an example:

https://twitter.com/lawprofblawg/status/1284677596316409856?s=20

Even in just one field, economics, the literature has come a long was since Becker published the Economics of Discrimination in 1957. Maybe some day works written after the 1980s will be assigned in law schools?

After that, the literature has expanded greatly to discuss discrimination in labor markets related to race, sex, HOUSEHOLD REPRODUCTION, sexual orientation, age, disability, and race (and a whole ton of other intersectionality SINCE, THE 1970s!)

Don't take my word for it. Look.

People have focused on the "pampered" line.

The pampered comes from many places. Male. Tenured.

For others, there are consequences to not publishing.

It wasn't that long ago when I read @meeradeo's book, right?

It's been a while, but there's also some literature about the feedback loop in terms of household reproduction, too.

Okay, I've made it through the first paragraph now.

Here's one such paper on household reproduction allocation in heterosexual households.

iwpr.org/wp-content/upl…

I recall there being literature out there that men overestimate the amount of household reproduction they undertake as well.

"But the truly hard part was the sense that I was spinning my wheels, not accomplishing anything. At the end of each day I was exhausted, but I had nothing to show for it."

Compare with: jstor.org/stable/4286404….

"If I return home from work and the child is still breathing, then you have done your job for the day.”

I wonder if there is any literature out there about lower standards of child-rearing for fathers than mothers.

Wait, found it!

journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.11…

Study: "In contrast to our expectations, we find that the gender gap in parents’ time with children persists when children are older, and even grow for some activities; extend to several other forms of shared parent–child time; and is often largest for higher educated parents."

The section "YOU DIDN’T BUILD THAT—BUT MAYBE YOU KEPT IT FROM FALLING APART" would have benefitted from a discussion of the "invisible work" literature AND the disparity of parenting requirements between men and women in heterosexual households.

By the way, Invisible Work is a great article.

jstor.org/stable/800538?…

So now I'm to the point in the article where I'm learning why #Feminists should be #Conservatives.

The quote the author uses is awesome because "appropriate to a man" is part of the quote. Nice!

I wonder if the author realizes the irony is using the "preservation of the status quo" as a goal when in fact we are discussing a child who will grow up to be an adult. Thoughts? Okay, I get he is talking writ large.

The author is fixated on something being lost. What is it? Is it the nuclear family? If so, again, the literature would help him discover how labor markets help assault the very thing he seeks to preserve.

As an aside, preservation isn't a good thing always. For example, there are lots of racist and sexist discussions couched in the language "preserving our way of life."

I agree we should value the invisible work of the household appropriately. It is something that radical labor economists and feminist theorists have talked about *checks notes* decades, if not longer.

And now that I've read this article, I would like to thank all of you who encouraged me to read it today. But I can't.

It's 5 p.m. somewhere, right?