Moral discourse on domestic labor: Gender, power, and identity in families

This paper responds to a recent article by Ahlander and Bahr (1995) on mora l dimensions of housework in families. The purpose of this paper is to poin t out important ways in which Ahlander and Bahr's work represents an academ ic form of "backlash" against feminist scholarship and leaves much social s cience research on housework either unsynthesized in their review or misint erpreted much of the work they did cite, particularly the work of feminist scholars. A second goal of this paper is to offer a perspective in which re searchers can simultaneously examine moral dimensions of housework and expl ore issues of gender, power, and identity in families.