Care and work or caring work

Care & Work or Caring Work?

Nathan Loynes

Churchill explores ‘Layers of Meaning’ within the parenting experience:

• 'family' and parent child relations• children and children's needs• maternal and paternal

responsibilities for children• desirable and normative parenting

and childcare practices.

Source: Harriet Churchill, 2011, Parental Rights and Responsibilities, Bristol, The Policy Press.

Layer One:

Parent-child and family relationsKey themes

1.an ethic of care

2.intimacy

3.power relations.


Layer Two:

1. An ethic of care towards children

• A distinction can be made between 'care as work, labour and activity versus caring about' children and ' care as an ethical orientation' (Williams, 2004a; Doucet, 2006).

• Sevenhuijsen's (1998) notion of an ethic of care: 'motivation towards and sensitivities to the welfare needs of others'.

• In ‘lay terms’: ‘children's needs come first' (Ribbens McCarthy et al, 2000)


children's needs come first'

Measuring up to these ideals, however, is

another matter. Much research finds that the

majority of parents fear they are not 'doing a good enough job' (Edwards, 2004; NFPI, 2001).


Gender Differences on ‘Caring For Children’

Mothers' accounts were 'more organised around accepting care responsibilities for children', 'the creation of a stable family unit was a strong moral theme in several women's accounts, requiring considerable emotional work, mediation of relationships and

organisation skills' (Ribbens McCarthy et al, 2000).

The male respondents did not perceive 'putting children first' in such demanding `caring for' terms, but rather referred to constraining their leisure, social or paid work aspirations in order to 'be there' for step and birth children, often in the evenings or at weekends. (Ribbens McCarthy et al,

2000).


Related: ‘putting family first’

• Women were influenced numerous aspects of their lives such as

• Their 'choice' of employment: with a preference for employment that 'fits round family commitments‘

• The informal use of `trusted and known' family members for childcare)

• Their residential location (to be near family);• Daily domestic and caring responsibilities, and availability

to provide support.'Putting family first' placed considerable demands on the women's daily lives and was not always compatible with the demands of being 'good reliable employees' and their breadwinning responsibilities: (Backett Milburn et al, 2008)


2. Intimacy in parent-child relations

• The Good childhood inquiry (Layard and Dunn, 2009, p

15) stated that 'above all children need to be loved'.

• The Counterpoint Research (2007) study discussed found that parents valued close parent-child relationships in terms of children's emotional well-being (and the personal emotional rewards of

parenthood) and emphasised how 'knowing your child' and 'good parent-child relationships' were at the heart of 'good parenting'.


Parenting: Emotional Work

• Doucet (2006) used the term `emotional responsibility' to refer to parental commitments to children's emotional well-being.

• Erikson (2005) conceptualises 'emotional work' within parent-child and family relationships as a two-way process involving all family members.

• Erikson (2005) in highlights how mothers undertake `activities that are concerned with the enhancement of others' emotional well-being and with the provision of emotional support' (Erikson, 2005, p 338),


Father’s Breadwinning

• Non-resident fathers living on low incomes can face burdensome financial costs associated with sustaining contact with children.

• Speak et al (1997) interviewed young non-resident fathers who detailed the way poverty, material deprivation and unpredictable employment impinged on their capabilities to provide for their children, sustain contact and participate in recreational activities with their children.


Parenting: There’s no manual!

• Sevon (2007) found that mothers often, over time, gained expertise in caring for their babies, especially when they were well supported and in good health.

• Sevon (2007) also found 'tiredness, guilt, shame, anxiety, anger and aggression' were often part of the experience of meeting the demands of childcare and adapting to parenthood.


3.Power and authority in parent-child and generational relations

• 31 per cent reported that their family had lots of rules

• 42 per cent did not have many rules

• 27 per cent said that their policy varied.• Almost half (49 per cent) added that the rules they did

have were strictly enforced.

• Black Caribbean mothers were most likely to report that they had lots of rules (39 per cent)

• While Bangladeshi mothers were the least likely (17 per cent). (Smith, 2007)


Spare the rod, spoil the child (again)

• The Counterpoint Research (2007) study found a keen rejection of both authoritarianand lax parenting (the latter associated with 'allowing children to get what they want'): too much parental control over children was detrimental.

• But so too was lax or permissive parenting parenting which 'indulged children' led to 'selfish and self-centred' children


‘Power’ and Parenting Teenagers

• Lewis's (2007) study of parenting teenagers found that many parents rejected notions of traditional authoritarian parenting as 'impossible to achieve in practice.

• Traditional, authoritarian parenting was damaging to parent-child relationships and likely to encourage children to rely more on their friends‘.

• Instead, parents supported ideas about 'respect for teenagers' opinions and freedoms‘.


Social Class Differences in Parenting

• Evidence suggests that parenting remains highly gendered and demanding in better-off families but that having a higher income enhances access to assets, social and cultural capital, and opportunities.

• Parents in this context can negotiate and seek to sustain a more privileged social status for their children, albeit not one without its own struggles and anxieties (Devine, 2004; Ribbens, 1994).


Caring for children – What is childcare?

Folbre and Yoon (2007, p 232) definitions of childcare need to incorporate a range of activities such as:

• Physical care (ie feeding, bathing, dressing or attending to the physical medical needs of a child);

• Domestic labour arising from having children in the house (such as preparing a meal, doing the laundry, tidying up toys or cleaning the house);

• Developmental care activities (ie activities that stimulate cognitive, emotional or social development, such as talking to your child, parental language use, reading to a child or playing with a child);

• Logistical and managerial activities (where a parent carries out an activity on their child's behalf, such as arranging social activities, transporting children to activities or communicating with teachers).


Domestic Imbalance

• Women continue to carry out the bulk of informal childcare and domestic labour.

• However, less research has examined fathers' experiences of childcare. Lewis and Lamb (2007) reviewed studies of fatherhood. They found that conventional measures of childcare which focus on the primary carer and physical day-to-day care of children neglect fathers' contribution to childcare. Fathers have been found to take on more responsibility for domestic labour if they hold more egalitarian views about gender (Lewis and Lamb, 2007)


Male/Female Patterns of Caring

Doucet (2006) proposed that men may care differently to women, with an emphasis on play.

Dermott (2008), felt that fathers are able to `select more rewarding activities with children', due to childcare or domestic labour being positioned as primarily mothers' work


Lewis and Lamb (2007) found evidence that some studies reported fathers could feel mothers had a `gatekeeping' role when it comes to children's lives and childcare issues.

Date post:	21-Jan-2018
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Care and work or caring work

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