Does your home never feel clean enough? Is it full of half-finished DIY and maintenance projects? Is your domestic life mainly about chores rather than rest or pleasure? If the answer to some or all of these questions is yes, you may be interested in the Cowan paradox.
Forty years ago an American historian, Ruth Schwartz Cowan, revealed that the time spent on domestic labour by a typical household had not fallen since the 1870s, despite liberating new technologies such as washing machines and microwaves. This unexpected lack of progress – which in many countries continues to this day – is the huge social conundrum that Helen Hester and Nick Srnicek’s busy book explores and aims to help solve. “The reduction of unwaged [house]work is necessary,” they write, “not … simply because much of it is drudgery. Rather, this reduction is essential because it expands the availability of free time that is the prerequisite for any meaningful … freedom.”
