Opinions | Covid-19 has made housework more visible, but it still isn’t valued
Kevin Sapere
A year of the coronavirus pandemic has spurred a new debate about how we divide housework and child rearing. Stories have frequently emerged of children passing by fathers to demand more from overworked and overwhelmed mothers and women at their breaking point. Now, some are calling for recognition of work in the home — from cooking to cleaning to child-care — as work and part of the nation’s infrastructure.
It is not surprising to see this framing. Since at least the late 19th century, feminists have worked to recognize and compensate the social and economic importance of housework. During the 1970s, the Wages for Housework campaign, a small international movement, argued that the labor done in the home was not just economically important but central to the functioning of capitalism.