Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Care work, as opposed to paid work, has garnered a great deal of attention and discussion among feminists recently, as transformations of the American family and the American workforce demand re-envisioning of care work and of strategies for how best to achieve equality for women as they continue to enter the workforce in massive numbers yet continue to provide the bulk of care-giving at home. While some feminist scholars have called for a strategy of focusing on paid work for women as the basis of citizenship and focus on the march to equality, others have argued for a greater emphasis on valuing care work itself, be it financially or by encouraging broader sharing of and de-gendering of care-giving responsibilities. This paper examines some of the implications of a strategy of pursuing a public, as opposed to private, value of care for both the nature of women's citizenship and for the status of the family as the seedbed of democracy. Historically, women were viewed as Republican Mothers, raising the next generation of good citizens. The family was seen as the proper site for the nurturing of civic virtue, and women seen and celebrated as citizens by virtue of their status as these nurturers. The object of my analysis is to determine whether calls for a greater valuing of care-giving by the state through its regulation and public policy outputs, reifies maternal categories of care-giving and whether women will be seen as having citizenship that is derivative in nature (based on the service of care-giving to the state) rather than based on liberal notions of autonomy. Also, if the family is viewed as being in service to the state, as the seedbed of democracy, that may impact the types of families viewed by the state as acceptable and further indict non-traditional or single-mother households as deviant. The 1996 welfare reforms are examined for its impact on these questions.