The Economics of Wifing Services: Law and Economics on the Family

With the growth of the Law and Economics movement, the extension of economic analysis into legal analysis has become commonplace. This extension derives from the acceptance of an assumption that individuals are economically rational beings, that is, they will act so as to maximize their wealth or to accommodate their preferences. Since the body of literature in the area of Law and Economics is already considerable, it seems fitting to undertake an assessment of the social and political implications of the Law and Economics perspective. The focus of this paper is the small but growing body of literature which adopts a Law and Economics approach to family law. It is through a discussion of this approach to the modern nuclear family that the normative assumptions underpinning Law and Economics can be uncovered, even by those who generally find economic jargon impenetrable. Of central concern in this article are the social and political consequences for women of the adoption of an economic analysis of the family as proffered by Law and Economics.