Love’s Labour’s Cost: The Political Economy of Intimacy
By
Emma Dowling
Taking care in order to be taken care of. That was the deal of
heteronormative love. Underpinning the romantic ideal was the domestic
contract between the two parties of the heterosexual couple. Each
partner entered into the relationship on the basis of a gendered
agreement, a reproductive deal: she would cook, clean, have sex, bear
children and care for him, while he was to pay the bills and fulfil his
role as care-taker – then he could expect to be taken care of. Since the
sexual revolution and tide of social change in the 1960s, feminist and
queer struggles challenged the inequality and desirability of this
set-up – that women’s housework was seen as the ‘labour of love’
undeserving of remuneration, whereas men’s work outside the home,
brought both social agency and power in the home thanks to his wage.
The neoliberal restructuring of the state and the economy alongside the
rise of the service industry and the entry of large numbers of women
into (often low-)paid work have macerated this reproductive deal.
