Abstract
At the core of the socialist movement, the debate on housework and child care took different shapes. Although much criticism had been directed at Marx and Engels for allegedly downplaying the importance of domestic work for social production and idealizing the proletarian family as a domain free of the oppression generated by private property, discussions raised by women's rights advocates within Marxist ranks managed to challenge naturalization of women's role in the social division of labor, questioning their exclusion from public sphere and their confinement to the household. Thus, they tied the possibility of women's emancipation to socialization of housework and child care within a classless society.
Keywords:
socialism; gender; children; domestic labor; State; feminism