ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to bring together the rational choice explanations of household relations and the processes of moral regulation to see whether any kind of synthesis of the two is possible. Although there is very little direct evidence of it in the interview talk, the couples’ lives seemed to reflect a strategic approach to jobs and property that was largely taken for granted. The couples’ shared concern for their children’s achievement of educational advantage was indicative of the forward-looking nature of their partnership. This notion of a shared “moral economy” of the household, engaging as a strategic unit in the market economy of employment and property, has to be set against the individual decisions of many of the respondents. The most striking fact about the labour-market positions of male and female interviewees was that, despite almost identical levels of education, men on average earned three times as much as women.
