These first two explanations might be compelling, but they’re also incomplete. They both imply that housework and modern work are things that workers have total agency over, when, in fact, most people’s working lives are not entirely theirs to control.

Technology only frees people from work if the boss—or the government, or the economic system—allows it.

Many stay-at-home moms, today and throughout the last century, have been happy to play their crucial role in the family economy. But one thing that Schor emphasizes is that underinvestment in women, and low expectations about their potential in the labor force, have played a big role in forcing many would-be woman employees to stay out of the workforce.

“I think the biggest reason that labor-saving technology in the home didn’t actually reduce labor for housewives is that the opportunity cost of women’s labor was socially valued at zero,” Schor told me. “By that I mean, a lot of men wanted their wives to keep busy but assumed that they would be worthless outside the home, as salaried workers, like lawyers or doctors.” Many women were caught between the husband’s expectation that they be useful and a male-dominated society that blocked them from education and salaried labor. As a result, they had little choice but to spend their full 40- to 50-hour workweek preparing the home for the family.

Housework hours finally fell only when women joined the labor force en masse. Since the 1960s, the share of women in the workforce has increased by about 50 percent. In that time, the typical adult woman has decreased her housework hours by about one-third, according to analysis by the economist Valerie Ramey . That is, the one thing that finally reduced labor in the home was … labor outside of the home.

What does this history tell us about life in the 21st century? Bosses set hours and income, and workers adjust. When husbands controlled their wives’ schedules, they insisted on a clean and tidy home and a ready-made dinner; and their wives typically obliged. When today’s employers hire a full-time worker under modern labor laws, they insist on a 40-hour week, or more; and the worker typically obliges. It doesn’t matter whether technology stays the same, or improves by leaps and bounds. The workweek is fixed and predetermined. A meaningful, economy-wide reduction in work hours would likely require changing the laws that determine the relationship between employers and employees.

Let’s return to the original question: Why don’t Americans have more free time? In my experience, the debate over labor and leisure is often fought between the Self-Helpers and the Socialists. The Self-Helpers say that individuals have agency to solve their problems and can reduce their anxiety through new habits and values. The Socialists say that this individualist ethos is a dangerous myth. Instead, they insist that almost all modern anxieties arise from structural inequalities that require structural solutions, like a dramatic reconfiguration of the economy and stronger labor laws to protect worker rights.