Gary S. Becker. A Treatise on the Family. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981.
The word economics comes from a Greek root meaning "household rules," or in modern terms household management. Only with the rise of Political Economy in the eighteenth century did the word acquire its present meaning of the study of exchange relations in the public sphere, the market. As more and more functions such as cooking, eating and child care have been moved out of the household and into the market, the role of the family in this public economy might seem to have declined. In fact, however, suggests Gary S. Becker in A Treatise on the Family, the family has an economic life that extends far beyond the production or consumption of material goods.
We tend to isolate family life from "economic" life, and resist the imposition of economic terms on family relationships. As a simple, everyday instance, we may regard a holiday or birthday gift of money as less appealing than some other gift because of the impersonal character of cash. Yet the cash is likely to be more efficient in terms of material gratification than a gift of the same value, since with the money we can select our own gift. We value the money gift less, perhaps, because part of the gratification we seek from a holiday or birthday present is the personal bond formed by it.
This example is itself, however, a demonstration in the economic dynamics of family life. The non-material value of personalism in a gift exists in a trade-off with its material value; we will rate a substantial gift of money, offering us considerable gratification (or utility, to use the economic term) in favor of a useless keepsake. Likewise, we will trade off the greater pleasure and lesser money cost of a candlelight dinner at home against the freedom from preparation and cleanup we achieve by going out.
Such trade-offs exist in every every of family life. There a...