Between Objective Needs and Moral Acceptance – the Trend in Outsourcing Domestic Work in Germany and Great Britain

Unpaid household labor and the provision of care within families present an important determinant for individual and collective welfare. However, in the past decades time and employment structures of households have undergone significant change. In particular, the increase of dual-earner couples and demographic shifts challenge traditional, mostly gendered arrangements of paid and unpaid labor within the household. Households are thus increasingly confronted with the decision whether to produce these ‘commodities’ by themselves or to buy services on the market.  While economic explanations emphasize the relevance of time and labor costs for such make-or-buy decisions, empirical results call for further explanations. From a sociological point of view domestic work is deeply embedded in a normative and moral framework about family and gender which defines the very boundary between the market and the private household. Although ideological and normative dimensions of domestic labor and employment arrangements within households have been intensely studied within gender and labor market sociology, the broader question about the intricate relationship between gender ideology, economics and the private sphere remain understudied, in particular from the perspective of economic sociology. This is especially true for quantitative studies.

Against this background the paper analyzes the trend in demand for domestic services in Germany and the UK. First, economic theories of household labor division are presented and applied to outsourcing decisions of domestic cores. These theories mostly emphasize structural and socioeconomic determinants. Second, these theories are contrasted with genuine sociological approaches, which emphasize the cultural and symbolic dimension of female-typed care work. The central hypothesis is that the cultural framing of domestic work as “labor of love”, which plays a key role in the social construction of family life and gender identity, presents a crucial determinant whether domestic services are accepted as a substitute for own care work.  The empirical analysis is based on a comparison of the UK, East and West Germany, intended to capture different institutional and cultural framings of paid and unpaid labor. The investigation focuses on the demand for paid household help and childcare using the German Socio-economic Panel (waves 1992-2012) and the British Household Survey (waves 1992-2008) applying panel methods. The results reveal that in West Germany and the UK the actual demand for paid household and childcare services lagged behind the „objective” needs supporting the idea that cultural and institutional framings are crucial for explaining patterns of demand. Moreover, the analysis also sheds light more generally on the changing boundary between household and markets and the relationship between culture and structure.