Table Of ContentL O V E ’ S LABO R
Thinking Gender Moral Dilemmas of Feminism
Linda J. Nicholson, editor Laurie Shrage
Subjection and Subjectivity
Also published in the series:
Diana T. Meyers
Feminism I Postmodernism Feminist Contentions
Linda Nicholson Seyla Benhabib, Judith Butler,
Drucilla Cornell, and Nancy Fraser
Gender Trouble
Judith Butler Feminists Read Fiabermas
Johanna Meehan
Words of Power
Andrea Nye Sacrificial Logics
Allison Weir
Femininity and Domination
Sandra Bartky The Other Machine
Dion Farquhar
Disciplining Foucault
Jana Sawicki Feminist Genealogies,
Colonial Legacies,
Beyond Accommodation
Democratic Futures
Drucilla Cornell
M. Jacqui Alexander and
Embattled Eros Chandra Talpade Mohanty
Steven Seidman
From Sex Objects to Sexual Subjects
Erotic Welfare Claudia Moscovici
Linda Singer
Race/Sex
Materialist Feminism and Naomi Zack
the Politics of Discourse
Feminism and Families
Rosemary Hennessy
Hilde Lindemann Nelson
An Ethic of Care
Playing with Fire
Mary Jeanne Larrabee
Shane Phelan
Feminist Epistemologies
Dislocating Cultures
Linda Alcoff and Elizabeth Potter
Uma Narayan
Gender Politics and Post-Communism
Emotional Rescue
Nanette Funk and Magda Mueller
Isaac D. Balbus
Engenderings
Men Doing Feminism
Naomi Scheman
Tom Digby
Feminist Theory and the Classics
Daring to Be Good
Nancy Rabinowitz and Amy Richlin
Bat-Ami Bar On and Ann Ferguson
Postmodern Revisionings of
the Political
Anna Yeatman
L O V E ’ S L A B O R
Essays on Women, Equality, and Dependency
Eva Feder Kittay
Routledge • New York and London
Published in 1999 by
Routledge
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New York, NY 10017
Published in Great Britain by
Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park
Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Copyright © 1999 by Routledge
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized
in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or here
after invented, including photocopying and recording or in any information storage
or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kittay, Eva Feder.
Love’s labor : essays on women, equality, and dependency / Eva Feder Kittay.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-415-90412-9 (he. : alk. paper). — ISBN 0-415-90413-7 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Equality. 2. Dependency. 3. Caregivers. 4. Women’s rights. 5. Equal rights
amendments. I. Title
HM146.K59 1998
305—dc21 98-18629
Dedicated to
my children, Leo and Sesha
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Contents
Preface ix
Introduction 1
Elusive Equality 2
Feminist Critiques of Equality 8
Should Women Still Want Equality? 17
Part One-—Love's Labor: The Requirements of Dependency 21
Chapter One: Relationships of Dependency and Equality 23
Reflections on Being a Mother's Child 23
Dependency in the Human Condition 29
Chapter Two: Vulnerability and the Moral Nature of
Dependency Relations 49
The Transparent Self of the Dependency Worker 51
Moral Obligations of Dependency Workers
and an Ethics of Care 53
Moral Obligations to the Dependency Worker 64
Part Two—Political Liberalism and Human Dependency 75
Dependency as a Criterion of Adequacy 75
The Role of Equality and Equality’s Presuppositions 78
The Arguments in Outline 79
Chapter Three: The Presuppositions of Equality 83
The Circumstances of Justice for a
Well-Ordered Society 83
vii
viii / Contents
The Idealization That “All Citizens Are Fully
Cooperating Members of Society” 88
Free Persons Are “Self-Originating Sources of
Valid Claims” 93
Chapter Four: The Benefits and Burdens of Social Cooperation 100
The Two Powers of a Moral Person and the Index
of Primary Goods 100
The Public Conception of Social Cooperation 104
Conclusion: The Principles of justice and
Dependency Concerns 109
Part Three—Some Mother’s Child 115
Introduction 115
Chapter Five: Policy and a Public Ethic of Care 117
Welfare De-Form 117
justifications of Welfare 122
The Family and Medical Leave Act 133
Welfare Re-Formed: A Vision of Welfare
Based on Doulia 140
Chapter Six: aNot My Way, Sesha* Your Way. Slowly.”
A Personal Narrative 147
A Child Is Born 147
Portrait of Sesha at Twenty-Seven 150
On the Very Possibility of Mothering and the Challenge
of the Severely Disabled Child 152
Mothering Distributed: The Work of Dependency Care 154
Alternative Routes—Routes Not Taken 160
Chapter Seven: Maternal Thinking with a Difference 162
Preservative Love 163
Socialization for Acceptance 165
Fostering Development 169
Care for Disability and Social Justice 173
Lessons for the Theoretician 178
Afterword 182
Notes 189
References 220
Index 231
Preface
Eldora Mitchell is nearly as old as the century, and for her it has
been a life of love and service. Starting at the age of 12, when she
went to work scrubbing white people’s floors to help her family.
Later, she cleaned hospital rooms to feed her own children and
cared for her grandchildren while their parents were working. In her
60s, she nursed her dying husband and her elderly mother.
Now, at 95, frail and slowly going blind, it is Mrs. Mitchell’s
turn. . . . Mrs. Mitchell has about $8,000 in savings and no long
term health insurance. What she does have is her family and her
expectation—that they will do for her as she has done for the previ
ous generations . . .
So begins an article that appeared on the front page of the New York
Times (Rimer 1998, 1) just as I was completing the book you have before
you. The same article ends with the story of Martha Perry, forty-nine,
who gave up her job and daily life with her husband to care for her
mother-in-law. After the death of her mother-in-law, she served as a
round-the-clock caregiver for six months for her ailing eighty-five-year-
old mother before finally returning to her husband and her job. What is
Martha Perry’s job when she is not taking care of family? She is the man
ager of a group home for disabled adults.
Both the older Eldora Mitchell and the younger Martha Perry have
spent their lives doing what I call dependency work, the work of caring
for those who are inevitably dependent. The dependency work on which
the reporter focuses is familial and largely unpaid1—the paid work these
women did was either domestic labor (itself not dependency work in the
sense discussed here, but closely aligned with it) or dependency work
proper, such as managing the group home for disabled adults.
The strength and strains of a life of dependency work are captured in
IX
