ABSTRACT
Social scientists have until very recently neglected the “production of consumption”—that is, the creation of finished goods and services for consumption within the boundaries of the home. 1 Production is usually studied in terms of the economy at large, and the concern of such research tends to be what is produced, how much is produced, and who gets it. Furthermore, analysts view consumption as the purchase of goods and services, and are frequently concerned most about distributional differences governed by social class background (cf. Weber 1966; Sobel 1981). When researchers focus on behavior within the household, they shift attention from things to emotions. Karl Marx, for example, recognized the human need for food, clothing, and shelter, but he emphasized their production and distribution; the social circumstances of actual consumption he considered unimportant because they are “outside the economic relation” (Cohen 1978:103). Talcott Parsons and Robert Bales (1955), on the other hand, differentiated material production, which occurs in the economy, from emotional production, which originates in the family. It is a woman's role to produce a happy, emotionally stable home, but Parsons and Bales ignored the part that physical consumption might play in providing such a home.
