Deborah Little's chapter in Socializing Care reinforced for me the fact that our society places very little value on caring work. I found Tronto's phases of care useful in that they allow us to see how some types of care ("caring about" and "taking care of") are more valued than others (the actual "care-giving"). When my grandma was in a nursing home near the end of her life, my mom and her siblings, all white, middle class professionals, certainly cared about her and took care of her by making the arrangements and paying for the nursing home, but those that actually gave my grandmother care on a daily basis held a less privileged place in society. Nearly all of them were women, many were women of color, and they made relatively little money for the labor they performed. I thought this chapter did a good job of explaining how caring work, especially caring for children, is pushed down the hierarchy of privilege so that women often end up caring for others in their paid employment while other, even less privileged, people care for their children while they're at work.
It is interesting that the agency Little studies used the feminist argument that women are trapped by domestic care-giving to push them into the workforce, thereby putting them in a difficult situation that is decidedly un-feminist. I think this apparent contradiction proves that the balance of care-giving versus income-earning is one that each woman and family must be able to decide for themselves. It is impossible for the state or some other outside entity to determine what is right for every family.
This chapter made me wonder who workfare really helps. Men appear to benefit, since women take on the public sphere jobs they once held without accepting any additional responsibility in the private sphere. The state also seems to benefit by pushing the burden of societal care onto the backs of women rather than "socializing care." Regardless, it is certainly not the women who benefit, as they have to manage both paid labor and their unpaid domestic responsibilities and are viewed as selfish if they fail to do either.
Also wanted to share this link on the prison to poverty cycle with ya'll: http://www.slate.com/id/2270328/. Excited for Friday!!
It truly is depressing when learning about this kind of stuff because like you said, care-givers in all realms (nursing homes providers, mothers, disability aids, and the list could go on) are all undervalued. These are the people who are actually making the difference in society by building/assisting our human capital and they are the ones that actually get the shaft.
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