Replacing Housework in the Service Economy

Using data from the 1993 Consumer Expenditure Survey to examine housework-related service consumption, the author finds that spending on housekeeping services and meals out—which helps relieve women's housework burden—is affected by dynamics within marriages as well as by family class and race-ethnicity. Other things equal, families in which women have more relative power, as reflected in their income and occupational status, consume more housekeeping services and spend more of their food dollars on meals out, as do wealthier families and white families. Along with housework itself, which is well studied, these results suggest that housework service consumption is also an arena for gendered negotiation and conflict within families, and one way that gender relations vary by class and race-ethnicity.