Labour Reproduction and the Family under Advanced Capitalism: Female Labour Force Participation and Fertility in Twentieth Century Canada

Abstract

This paper argues that the expansion of corporate capitalism since the turn of the century and the corresponding proliferation of the wage labour market have transformed the way the family reproduces labour, and created contradictions for the family with respect to the problem of labour maintenance and labour renewal. As corporate capitalism expands, an increasing segment of domestic female labour is being converted into wage labour, and along with it, the rising dependency of the family on the wage economy. In this process, the family finds it necessary to increase its capacity to earn wages as a means to maintain the labour power of its members on a daily basis; in so doing, the process of labour maintenance becomes contradictory to that of labour renewal since the two compete on the same financial resources and since the continuation of wage labour relationship does not rely on generational labour renewal. The strategies followed by Canadian families in expanding on the earning capacity and reducing fertility and family size may be seen as adaptive mechanisms in response to the contradictions created by the wage economy.