Modes of Care and Mothering: How Does Citizenship and Care Intersect in the Lives of Mothers and Disabled Children?

Abstract

British feminists have long argued that welfare policies in the UK rely on gendered assumptions about care responsibilities, which maximize the role of women as carers while minimizing the role of the state (Graham 1983; Lewis 1992; Ungerson 1987; 1990). The introduction of community care in the UK in the early 1990s is one such example of a shift away from institutional care towards care within the community, which quickly became care within the home, by women (Baldwin and Twigg 1991; Orme 2001). Welfare policies have been able to rely on women to be informal carers through a range of social norms, cultural expectations and material practices which have positioned women as the presumed primary carer (Finch and Groves 1983; Finch and Mason 1993). Changes in household structures, women’s involvement in the labour market and changes in gender norms have seen some move away from women taking on the caring role to the exclusion of other aspects of life and identity (Lupton and Barclay 1997; ONS 2007; Sullivan 2000; Ungerson 2000). However, feminists argue that social conditions, gender norms and welfare policies continue to create tradi tional demarcations of gender roles within the home (Charles 2000; McKie et al. 2002; O’Brien 2007).