A Margin of Professional and Domestic Labor Childbearing as Unpaid and Unrecognized Work

The paper defines childbearing as a part of reproductive labor, showing that this work is unrecognized as such as well as unpaid, in both the public and private sphere. First, based on a socio-economic study of the institutions regulating surrogacy markets in the United-States, the article shows that surrogates perform free labor and questions the recognition of this work. Then, an analysis of the INSEE definition of domestic work shows that childbearing, despite meeting the necessary criteria to fit into the category of domestic work, is never considered as such. Thus, in both cases, the activity of childbearing is never considered as work.