Transaction costs and marriage roles

From One Reason Women Stay Home: Because It's Easier on Everyone by Megan McArdle. I like McArdle because she always has interesting insights. In this case, by applying economic theory to the source of role differences within a marriage.

Economist Ronald Coase won the Nobel Prize for developing a theory of the firm: an explanation for why we have companies with employees at all, rather than simply having an owner contract for services on an ad-hoc basis. They formed companies, Coase theorized, because it allowed them to reduce the transactions costs of doing business: it's time consuming and costly to figure out how much you want to pay someone to serve as an occasional CFO. Easier to put them on staff and pay them a flat rate for doing all the CFO stuff.

Miller is suggesting that the traditionally gendered marriage also reduced transaction costs. Gay couples I know who've adopted children generally report that one parent ends up as "Dad" and one parent as "Mom". One person ends up in charge of the doctors appointments, the playdates and the ballet recitals; the other may help, but only one is the executive. And I gather that it's not just because we have some sort of social expectation that someone will be "Mom"; it's because the costs of sharing the duties outweigh the benefits. If two people are in charge of scheduling playdates and planning birthday parties, then you have to spend an enormous amount of time sharing information about these things. Moreover, you need to spend more time developing a joint policy on playdates and birthday parties: what sort of kids? How many? Who gets struck off the permitted list, and for what offenses? This is not only time consuming, but also, creates opportunities for spousal arguments.

This is what Miller is describing among the two career couples: constant negotiation over who will do what. This may contribute to the decreased satisfaction with their marriages and their lives that people report after they have children.

If the division of labor is a more efficient, less bothersome, way to handle the duties of childrearing, then it may be that gendering that division also has benefits. Leave aside arguments about whether women have innate tendencies in one direction or another; even a 100% culturally conditioned gender division might have benefits that lead to its adoption. Assigning the home tasks to one gender means that you don't need to negotiate who will stay home, reducing marital conflict. It also eases any regret that the stay-at-home partner might feel over their decision.