ABSTRACT
Since the 1950s a struggle over the family has gone on at multiple levels, waged by scholars, politicians, media elites, and ordinary women and men. The cultural form this struggle takes is shaped by the traditional ideology of domesticity and the gendered social universe that it produced. Although the traditional family retains zealous defenders, full-time domesticity is an option that contemporary women can afford, and many of those who could afford it have rejected it on ideological grounds. In the absence of public provisioning of child care, it is a course available only to those with flexible work schedules and/or the financial means to hire domestic help. Domestic inequality persists, even in families committed to the new arrangements, and there are major economic as well as cultural and psychological obstacles to the equal sharing of housework and child care between men and women.
