She was awarded a five- year fellowship with the MacArthur Foundation in 1998, and the Leontief Prize of the Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University in 2004.

First, she attempts to show that mainstream economics have failed to provide adequate models to explain relations between parents and children in terms of development, conflict and social welfare.

Understanding and addressing these conflicts between groups might lead to more efficient and satisfying means to providing care of children and the elderly.

[10] Along with James Heintz and other contributors from the Center for Popular Economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Folbre and her co-authors use wit and wisdom to expose the misconceptions about and uncover the realities of the U.S. economy.

While the book is written in simple, jargon-free language, the authors also have included a detailed glossary to help readers navigate through the economics terminology.

This highly accessible book covers a wide spectrum of topics, including race and gender inequalities, labor issues, education, welfare, health government spending.

This metaphor represents family values of love and economic reciprocity, which she contrasts with Adam Smith's "invisible hand," in which the market forces of supply and demand exist alongside the pursuit of self-interest.

Folbre applauds the rising autonomy of women but argues that if we don't establish thoughtful rules defining our collective responsibilities for caregiving, the penalties suffered by the needy will increase.

The book is divided into three sections, in which Folbre explores a wide range of issues, from the view of the housekeeping state to the rights of pregnant workers in Mexico.

Folbre views corporations as profit-obsessed and corrupt tyrants and often sees governments as bloated bureaucratic regimes that serve few and punish the poor.

Folbre argues that radical changes to the way Americans live and work, democratic control of the economy, as well as a dramatic redistribution of wealth will strengthen the ethic of solidarity and social reciprocity.

She concludes with a resounding call—to extend family values to society as a whole—and a series of policy proposals for increasing both the quality and the recognition of care.

[12] Edited by Nancy Folbre and Michael Bittman, this book contains a collection of eleven essays discussing a variety of topics related to child and elder care.

Yet she also argues that, as part of the non-market sector, care work is economically undervalued by simply utilizing its replacement cost.

She argues that the mentality espoused by Oliver Stone's character Gordon Gecko that "greed is good," helped lead to the 2008 crash and persists in its wake.

Yet, the same social norms that consider aggression, greed and lust an advantage to men in public life also view such things as perverse in women.

Folbre and England discuss the struggle for recognition of what has traditionally been viewed as "women's work", and how providing these services constitutes a public good whose beneficiaries pay almost nothing.

Nevertheless, Folbre points out that people do not respond to changes in the cost of children quickly, and those that choose family life are more likely to experience economic hardship – particularly single women.

As policy focuses more heavily upon the elderly, the failure to support commitments to child care weakens the social norms that uphold the reproduction of future workers.

Folbre discusses and briefly critiques solutions posed by others and concludes with a call for compensation for parents and job training for young adults.

Jeremy Bentham defended the legitimacy of sex as a form of recreation and protested the persecution of homosexuals, and Francis Place actively promoted contraception.

Folbre examines the connection between social changes and John Caldwell's work on the demographic transition observed in the United States in the 1970s.

She notes how private and governmental retirement planning has slowly replaced intergenerational reciprocity and how employers invest in the human capital of their workers, much as parents once did.

By this view, all social institutions are evaluated in terms of costs and benefits – even to the point where investments of affection are weighed against the potential for reciprocity.

She recognizes the benefits of the mother bird's increased autonomy (and perhaps the inevitability of the trend), but concludes her article with a call for collective responsibility for caring for others.