Marx, Housework, and Alienation

For different feminist theorists, housework and child rearing are viewed in very different ways. I argue that Marx gives us the categories that allow us to see why housework and child care can be both a paradigm of unalienated labor and also involve the greatest oppression. In developing this argument, a distinction is made between alienation and oppression and the conditions are discussed under which unalienated housework can become oppressive or can become alienated.