Theories of Reproductive Behavior: A Marxist Critique

Martha E. Gimenez and Martha E. Gimenez
Additional contact information
Martha E. Gimenez: Dept. of Sociology Univ. of Colorado at Boulder

Review of Radical Political Economics, 1979, vol. 11, issue 2, 17-24

Abstract: Current theories of reproductive behavior fall within voluntaristic or deterministic frameworks. Micro-economic theories that view children as con sumer goods or home produced goods which parents either purchase or produce subject to income, price, and taste constraints, are essentially voluntaristic. Sociological theories, on the other hand, stress the socially determined and coer cive nature of reproductive behavior. From the standpoint of historical material ism, both theories are open to criticism because they provide a reified and ahis torical account of reproductive behavior based upon unacknowledged capitalist forms of consciousness and forms of social objectivity. It is argued that a scien tific analysis of reproduction should transcend the voluntaristic and determin istic alternatives which are the hallmark of bourgeois thought. Instead, using the method of historical materialism, reproduction should be conceptualized in structural, concrete, and historical terms; i.e., as the reflection of the reproduc tive strategies of classes in the context of a given mode of production.

Date: 1979
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/048661347901100202 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:reorpe:v:11:y:1979:i:2:p:17-24

DOI: 10.1177/048661347901100202

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Review of Radical Political Economics from Union for Radical Political Economics
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().