Kinder, Küche, Kirche, Kapital

Strasser shows convincingly how her subject fits into the great capitalist transformation of our society. The shift from home production to factory production and the market is a main theme, naturally enough. Strasser also argues well that housework changed along paths previously established for capitalist labor in general. . . . Never Done [also] places itself squarely in the new tradition of scholarship that explores the historical construction of gender. Perhaps its main contribution in this area is to put the much-discussed idea of "separate spheres" in a context of material life.