Introduction to Social Reproduction Theory
A simple introduction to social reproduction theory and why it's important to this newsletter.
Social reproduction theory is central to my analysis of parenting, childhood, education, and everything in between. I'm excited to tell you about it!
Social reproduction theory (SRT) aims to explain how capitalism maintains itself both in the short-term and long-term. It especially focuses on the working class: how it keeps itself going from day to day in order to be ready to work, and how the pool of labor is sustained from generation to generation so that capitalism can continue to exist. Today I'll go over what it means and how it's influential to antiparent.
Table of Contents
What is SRT?
When we talk about the working class, we're usually talking about waged (paid) work for an employer. But there's a whole lot of other work that goes into making sure workers are prepared for their shifts. It happens on two scales, day-to-day and intergenerationally (generation-to-generation). We call this work social reproductive labor.
Social reproduction theory (SRT) is the theory of the role social reproductive labor plays in capitalist society.
Day-to-Day
Some examples of day-to-day social reproductive labor:
- Preparing food
- Doing laundry
- Cleaning and maintaining a home
- Doing childcare and eldercare
- Educating children (for their future roles in society) and workers (to keep them up-to-date on best practices, or enable shifts in roles)
- Commuting from work or training/extracurricular activities
None of this work is usually paid when it's done within the family. But there's no way around it - it needs to be done. Without it, whoever is working to pay the bills won't be ready for their next shift.
SRT says that since workers are so dependent on this labor to be able to work at all, the people doing the labor should be considered part of the working class, regardless of whether they're getting paid. (Like housewives.) This matters because most worker organizing (e.g. in unions, communist revolutions) has historically ignored the contributions of social reproductive laborers. SRT emphasizes that social reproductive issues are worker's issues, and that discussions of improving working conditions need to include how social reproductive labor will be handled.
Social reproductive labor isn't limited to the working class, but it's an especially difficult burden on it. Higher earning members of the working class and the capitalist (owning) class are often able to lower the burden on themselves by paying others to do this type of work.
Intergenerational
For capitalism to be able to maintain itself, it needs to maintain a consistent pool of labor. There are three ways that a labor force can be maintained over time:
- Generational reproduction (having babies who then grow up to be workers)
- Migration (workers come from other countries to join the economy)
- Slavery (workers are forced to work for no pay)
These three sources of workers balance each other out in a lot of ways economically and politically. The owning class often leverages each of them in order to maintain that balance. For example:
- Migrant workers are often in very unstable conditions that make them willing to work for less pay. This puts a downward pressure on wages for everyone: if non-migrant workers band together to start asking for higher pay, the owner of the company can just get rid of them and hire migrant workers instead.
- In the US, the 13th amendment allows for capitalists to put incarcerated people to work for no pay. Similar to the first point, the underpaid or unpaid pool of labor puts a downward pressure on wages for everyone else.
- Propaganda about migration, such as the great replacement theory, is used to support racist and nationalist efforts to increase generational reproduction. (Basically, to encourage white women to have more white babies.) These social efforts work hand-in-hand with legal and political ones, such as abortion bans.
The owning class also engages in intergenerational reproductive labor: the work that produces the next generation of owners. Technologies like in-vitro fertilization (IVF) and egg freezing allow people with sufficient resources to have more fine-tuned control over generational reproduction.
Why is SRT important to antiparent?
SRT is a Marxist feminist theory, and it's mostly been used to describe women's contributions to the world economy. Most of the discussion centers on housework and education: who does it, whether it's paid for, and which structural systems benefit from it.
One of the main goals I have for antiparent is to extend SRT to analyze children's social reproductive labor. Children do many kinds of labor throughout their childhoods for the benefit of their parents, governments, and future employers - but it's not often recognized as labor. The lack of recognition denies them the ability to organize as a class, whether it's for better working conditions or more control over the labor they do.
For example, children in the US are expected to spend the bulk of their childhoods, ages 5-18, in school. For most children, the schoolwork they do is meant to get them ready to work for an employer (as well as get them familiar with citizenship and social norms). They are expected to attend school for an average of 6.64 hours a day for 180 days a year, not including commute or extracurricular activities or homework. This is labor - unpaid labor! But children have very little control over any of it: how long they go to school, what they learn, how much homework they do, what their physical environment is like, when they get to eat or drink water or go to the bathroom while they're there.
Home is more of the same - often worse. The (inadequate) systems of accountability that exist at least on some level for schools often don't apply to parents at all. But children still do many kinds of social reproductive labor at home for the benefit of their family. Children, especially girls, clean and prepare food and help take care of younger children.
The biggest type of social reproductive labor they do, though, is harder to pin down: they are a source of meaning, purpose, and validation for their parents. On an even broader scale, they represent the future of society, so governments and social/cultural institutions are very invested in portraying and treating them in certain ways. This translates into a lot of labor for children: the labor it takes to become the "right" kind of person. It involves learning complex structures of social/cultural/citizenship norms and reliably being able to navigate them. It involves constantly putting aside their own preferences and accepting a lower status in society. They have to do this type of labor or risk being targeted for violence by their parents, other people, or the government.
SRT, as far as I can tell, has not been used to analyze this type of children's labor yet, but I believe it's the best tool to do so. SRT is about making the invisible visible. It resists biological/natural explanations for the oppression of women. It makes it clear how capitalist society depends this constant stream of unpaid or underpaid reproductive labor; it shows how capitalist society could not survive without it. I believe the same is true for children's labor. We don't recognize it yet, but with SRT, I hope we can someday.
Resources
Florence Stencel-Wade
Tithi Bhattacharya
Katharyne Mitchell