All economic systems, modes of production, and all human history presuppose two types of basic human activities: production of the means of subsistence and production of new life or procreation. The first is necessary to satisfy basic human needs and to sustain life, the second to ensure the continuation of society from generation to generation. Engels correctly called both types of human activity production and stated that the institutions of a particular society or of a particular epoch are determined by the organization and the development of these two types of production. As production of the means of subsistence is dependent on human cooperation in labor, so too production of new life or procreation is dependent on the cooperation of women and men in the sexual act. Both processes are closely interlinked, and as Marx noted, in both processes people enter into a double relationship.
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Maria Mies (1980) studied this question.