Theorizing Care and Care Work

Anttonen, Anneli; Zechner, Minna

doi:10.1057/9780230307612_2

Cited by 29 publications

(35 citation statements)

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“…One of the main contributions made by research on the ethics of care is that it introduced new dimensions to the debate on care by showing that moral reasoning is also based on the ethics of care and is gendered. According to Anttonen and Zechner (2011), this research raised the following questions: Is this the typical moral voice of women? Can only women provide care?…”

Section: First Generation Care Researchers' Concepts Of Carementioning

confidence: 99%

“…It is especially important to understand that caring as a concept was developed within a feminist historical context. Anttonen and Zechner (2011) provide an overview of the concept of care, dividing the research into epochs by describing the first and second generations of care researchers. According to them, feminist scholars in the early 1980s began systematically to describe the special characteristics and societal importance of the unpaid and domestic work done by women as care.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…Graham (1983) suggested in turn that caring combines love and work, but it is also about norms of gender since it keeps women in a subordinate position in relation to men. Anttonen and Zechner (2011) conclude that, in the UK, a great number of studies on women as unpaid caregivers were conducted around this time and these studies showed that women were responsible for a major share of caring work, which was often experienced as burdensome. At this point in time, care was in other words understood as unpaid work by women carried out within the family.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…The second generation of care researchers, according to Anttonen and Zechner (2011), emphasized intersectionality (a term coined by Crenshaw 1989) in the study of care, and aspects such as class and ethnicity increasingly became the focus of attention. Of interest is that care recipients have almost always been overlooked in care research.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…Jeppsson Grassman et al 2009). Anttonen and Zechner (2011) give one explanation that shows why care recipients in studies on elderly care were depicted as helpless, passive and dependent people. This explanation could be linked to the fact that feminist scholars did not separate the concept of care from the kind of caring that is performed by mothers.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Men do care! : A gender-aware and masculinity-informed contribution to caregiving scholarship

Wallroth

2016

Linköping Studies in Arts and Sciences

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In caregiving literature, it is often the female gender that has been the focus of attention, and in particular women's unpaid labor. Studies also tend to make comparisons between men's and women's caregiving, using men's caregiving experiences to show not only that women face greater burdens, but also that men's needs can be disregarded. This means that while gender analyses are not uncommon in the caregiving literature, gender tends to be equated with womanhood. The research problem that this dissertation addresses is therefore the gender bias that characterizes caregiving scholarship at present and the fact that this bias is impeding us from moving the debates on care and caregiving forward. The aim of the dissertation is twofold. Firstly, it attempts to contribute to the rectification of the gender bias in question by focusing on men's caregiving and answering the following research questions: What motivates men to provide care for their elderly parents? How do adult sons experience caregiving? What do adult sons think that care and caregiving are, i.e. what are their perspectives on care? Secondly, this dissertation also aims to explore whether a gender-aware and masculinity-informed perspective can be used to enhance our understanding of caregiving. Thus, through a phenomenological analysis of interviews with 19 caregiving adult sons and sons-in-law, this dissertation discusses how motives, experiences and perspectives, which have so far been interpreted as unique to women, are also matters that men talk about and consider important in caregiving. The dissertation argues therefore that much could be gained if we were to rectify the gender bias that characterizes the literature on family caregiving and explore caregiving men in the genderaware and masculinity-informed way that is lacking in this literature at present. Inspired by the debate within studies of masculinity, the dissertation argues that within the debate on care there is a hegemony of care which has so far tended to exclude men's perspectives on caregiving because literature on family caregiving has regarded women as the ideal caregivers. This dissertation shows that a gender-aware and masculinity-informed perspective on care can increase our understanding of family caregiving and contribute to the rectification of the gender bias that care research suffers from. Against this backdrop, it is proposed that caregiving men should not solely be regarded as empirically interesting. This is because they are an unexploited and theoretically profuse source of information about caregiving.

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Section: First Generation Care Researchers' Concepts Of Carementioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

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