Pigou took much the same line in his “welfare economics”, where he argued that poor women, and mothers in particular, ought to receive financial assistance from the State so that they could perform their domestic work properly without having to look for a job. Progress was also made in adapting market concepts to the analysis of activities within the home. In them, people make rational decisions about the distribution of their time between activities for the market (paid production work), activities for the home (unpaid domestic and care work)10 and leisure.11 Becker, who went closely into this aspect, considered that households acted as a unit following the rational choice model12 and maximizing the shared utility of their members, who were subject to time and income constraints.