<HTML>In a message dated 8/22/2003 5:43:19 AM GMT Daylight Time, mschiller@pobox.com writes: <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">Sounds like mom'll have to work more than two hours. Those 'uniforms' suggest private school. Barter was mentioned in response to '...how do you avoid the cash nexus?' </BLOCKQUOTE> Yes, and I repeat my point that cash is still superior to barter and that more of that stuff people are calling "polluted" cash is, in the eyes of immigrant workers better than less. At least among the immigrant service sector employee families I know (with wageearners of both sexes), I do not know actually whether uniforms are a common thing, but school fees and textbook charges are regular parts of the budget in MANY home countries (poor districts in the US too for that matter.) I agree with BE that use of immigrant labor, of many kinds, often has fundamentally anti-family effects. But even though I secretly sneer a bit at the ways some people rely on servants, I think it's dumb to hang these effects only on "feminists." <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">I missed the point of your critique. Was it that BE was entertaining rigid gender roles to her disadvantage? </BLOCKQUOTE> Not just BE, this list. Other people have made that point more eloquently than I have. And at the micro level we are being patronizing to both the buyer--on lifestyle grounds--and the seller--on "polluted cash" grounds--of services. I was reluctant to wade back into this argument precisely because I have not read very much of BE's book, and other people have posted more current additional references. However at the moment I am enjoying whacking the hell out of straw men I freely admit may or may not be closely related to the content of the book. DC</HTML>