Re: AUT: wages for housework

[Katha Pollitt <kpollitt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Well Monty, maybe we'd better be clear about what we're talking about.
It was my understanding that wages for housework was not just for
mothers of small children -- after all, "housework" means cooking,
cleaning, running a house, whether or not there are children. Reading to
children, bathing children, taking children to the playground are not
usually called Housework. "I have to catch up with the housework"
doesn't mean "now I have to take my child to the pediatrician" or even
"now I have to go to the store. " It means things like "Now I have to
wash the bathroom floor, vacuum, do laundry" etc.
  "Wages for childraising" is not quite the same issue.   Welfare,
maternity benefit (as in Europe) are a kind of wages for childraising.
But I don't think the WfH people thought they were arguing simply for
more, higher welfare.
  It was my understanding the the WfH people argued that the wife
enabled the labor of the husband (by cooking, cleaning, other services
including doing his share of the childcare, if there were children).
Thus she should be paid as someone who is contributing to labor power.
Are you saying this is NOT part of what they argued?  In other words,
they believed that a childless woman, or a wman whose children were
grown (or teens? Or in school all day?) should NOT get wages for
housework, even if she did all the housework?  but only a woman qua
mother--thus, presumably whether or not she was married, and thus also
presumably even if she worked for a living?


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