In resoponse to my post: Twenty-five years ago, Gary Becker published Treatise on the
family (1981), based on his 1965 paper "A Theory of the Allocation of Time". It gave a
strong impetus to the feminist critique of the neoclassical tool kit. (Sumitra Shah)
   
Laurence Moss asked: Why did it do that?  It seems quite straight forward and never
claimed to be an actual description of how families behave or make decisions but some sort
of "engine of analysis" to mix schools of thought that could be used to help rationalize
specific "facts" about the world in which we live.
  
  
If Becker's theory does not describe how families actually behave or make decisions, it at
least ought to have a  meaningful resemblance to the family analyzed. For example, it
makes assumptions about the family relationships, such as being led by the altruistic male
head,  which can be construed as either wrong-headed or harmful in the conclusions it
reaches. Some feminist economists worry that this assumption of altruism on the part of
the male householder who meticulously follows self-interest in the market place, does not
have logical inconsistency, particularly if you are going to use the same market-oriented
tools to analyze behavior in the family, not even enriched by any insightful observations.
They are also concerned about the policy implications of this benign picture of the
household which contradicts women's inferior economic status.
   
Similarly, rationalizing specific "facts", such as women's lower earnings as the family's
utility-maximizing "choice" has too many unexamined social-psychological issues to be
convincing to anybody but die-hard neoclassicals. Not to mention, it it also tautological.
As J. S. Mill warned in his methodological reflections, abstract reasoning  is a
scientific  necessity,  but the complexity of the real world, what he describes as
'disturbing causes' ought to be heeded by economists, especially  when they reach into
areas of human life which are not so simple to understand as the market exchange for
highest gain.
   
Quoting Deborah Redman (The Rise of Political Economy as a Science, 1997):  Disturbing
causes in his (Mill's) view can be of two types. They may be causes not yet discovered by
political economists and, therefore, attributable to circumstances that operate on human
behavior through the principle of human nature that distinguishes political economy as a
science -- that is , the desire for wealth. Or they may be attributable to some other law
of human nature, which means that they fall outside the scope of political economy. In the
latter case, "the mere political economist who has studied no science but Political
Economy...will fail" (Mill ).
   
Feminist economists believe that Becker's effort to understand/explain the family falls
woefully short of its objective. His arguments and method lead him to some bizarre
conclusions, such as polygamy is more beneficial to women than monogamy. Why is is then
that majority of the world views polygamy as simply 'bad' for women? Becker's theory is
simple and simplistic.
   
A more fruitful approach is found in Amartya Sen's "cooperative conflict" model which he
originally developed to analyze traditional family structures. It uses the bargaining
model to understand the very particular nature of the family relationships which are
fraught with all kinds of motives.
   
Best, Sumitra Shah