A Class Analysis of Single-Occupied Households

Satyananda J. Gabriel

Chapter 9 in Class Struggle on the Home Front, 2009, pp 197-217 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract The household is undergoing a dramatic transformation in the United States. The household of Leave it to Beaver, The Cosby Show, and The Sopranos is rapidly giving way to the household of the Mary Tyler Moore Show, Being Erica, and Seinfeld. The current estimate of single-occupied households in the US is over thirty million people. The single-occupied household is the fastest-growing type of household in the US. Single-occupied households have increased in number by approximately 340 percent from 1960 to 2006, while the US population, as a whole, has only grown about 66 percent in that same time period. In other words, the single-occupied household is increasing at a rate five times faster than that of the general population. This indicates a process of social transformation, generated by specific contradictions within the US social formation over the period in question. This chapter will apply the tools of an overdeterminist Marxian analysis to understanding these contradictions, both internal and external to household structures. In particular, it is the objective of this chapter to specify the unique class aspects of these contradictions that shape the existence and reproduction of single-occupied households. In doing so, it will be necessary to produce an understanding of both the internal class dynamics of single-occupied households and the external class influences overdetermining the growth of such households.

Keywords: Class Analysis; Social Formation; Household Structure; Domestic Service; Surplus Labor (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-230-24699-7_9

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DOI: 10.1057/9780230246997_9

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