FOLBRE- Maydick

In Nancy Folbre's article "The Black Four of Hearts: Towards a New Paradigm of Household Economics" she speaks about how different types of households deal with their economic situations as they came to them. One specification that particularly stuck out to me was when she spoke about the neoclassical household's approach to their economic situation. "It presumably maximizes the "joint utility” of its members. But the specification of a joint utility function poses a serious problem for neoclassical theory because it requires the aggregation of individual tastes and preferences, a task that is intrinsically problematic."It was interesting to me to see that the members of the household worked together even though it went against the neoclassical theory. It was odd to me that they did not choose the option that would maximize profitability.