Gendered Care Practices

Caring defies neat definition. In one sense caring can be understood as socially constructed in so far as what counts as care, good or bad, and how societies organise, reward, and regulate care is historically and culturally contingent (Fine 2006; Chapman 2004). These variable meanings of care, and the enormous cultural relativity of caring practices at different times and places, are nonetheless rooted in a universal material reality of the human condition (Nussbaum 2000, 1995). Human social life is impossible without care; we are born entirely dependent on the care of others, and although we may achieve a degree of independence at different points in our life, we can never escape the reality of our inherent vulnerability (Badgett and Folbre 1999; Bowlby, McKie, and Gregory 2009). Most of us will also be called on to provide care to others in various ways, but even those who live relatively care-free lives, as social and emotional animals we necessarily subsist within webs of emotionally reciprocal relations.