ABSTRACT
The requirements of market rationality create a modern dilemma for family life between the obligations of ‘caregiving’ and the necessity to gain wages, which is not resolved to this day. In trying to resolve this dilemma (for the state), governments dither between particular family models, mainly that of the male household head, but sometimes the gender-neutral, individual family member model. The family wage is one of the most extensive family policies of the liberal democratic state (notably of the English-speaking countries), because it touched nearly all working-class households, so too the Factory Acts (1840s) and Education Acts (1880s) which protected children from exploitation. Far from a ‘patriarchal welfare state’ that previously seemed so entrenched in major government policies such as the family wage and breadwinner welfare, some conservatives claim there is a ‘feminist welfare state’. Regulating the market by the family wage created a structure of male power and control in the public and private world alike.
