>The relationship of the 'middle class housewife', for example, to the means of production is something that is not entirely clear to me, nor is the political significance of a refusal of this role something that I find uninteresting or irrelevant.
Since your premise seems to be that these working women are "middle class", perhaps it would help to define "middle class".
By "refusal of this role" do you perhaps mean a refusal to stay out of the paid workforce? Or to put it another way, agreement to take paid work. (Or do you just mean a refusal to clean up after the old man?)
Do these "middle class housewives" have an economic need to work though? Because then they would actually be working class.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas