Question 1. How do the economic inequality in our society place additional burdens on the working-class and the poor families?
Answer. The economic inequality brings the consequence of varying income capabilities for the families which further brings economic disparity in terms of disposable income available to them. As the essential amenities including the primary healthcare, education, food, lodging, clothing, and amusement facilities are almost evenly priced for all the economic level families, managing the expenses for above amenities becomes an extremely costly affair for the working-class and poor ones. Therefore, in the case of a healthcare emergency (say child healthcare) the management and arrangement of extra income resources become the vital questions that can be addressed only by placing an additional burden on the family members of these working-class and poor families.
Rubin’s essay explains specifically how the families normally depend on the female members to manage the household and on the males to earn money for running the household expenses. Hence, in the case of the extraneous expenses onboard, the female members are left with the only option of doing a job for splitting the load on the male members. Most of the families require separate shifts for male and females so that proper attention is also paid to the children in the family. Therefore, the parents need to work in separate shifts so that either of the parent remains at home in case of any situation requirement for the children and the household. In spite of all the above-mentioned extra efforts to manage the expenses, the issue of household management and contingent problems still stand as a challenge for the family members to manage them. Finally, the raised burden on the family members and need of simultaneous efforts to manage the household becomes a tough challenge which ultimately results in a vicious circle that keeps on augmenting the burden on families forever.
