At home and at work Book

It offers a very new perspective indeed. Drawing on economic theory, the authors postulate that a family allocates work — any work, be it housework, doing the shopping, or earning money outside the home — on the basis of maximum utility to the family unit. The family's ideas on utility are derived from such factors as its income, education and ideology. A carefully crafted research study confirms these speculations on work and housework allocation, and examines its impact on family relationships. The authors also provide a history of theories of the family. Functionalist they may be, but Geerken and Gove are attempting to strip away some of functionalism's serious shortcomings in order to explain the work patterns of married women, the sharing of tasks between spouses, and finally, selected aspects of marital quality.