The Capacity to Care: Gender and Ethical Subjectivity

What is the capacity to care and why does it matter? We are not born with the innate capability to care for others, so how do we develop it? In this book, Wendy Hollway problematizes the assumption that the capacity to care is natural and can be taken for granted. Key processes in the early development of babies and young children, and how they create the capability for individuals to care, are explored with a focus on the role of intersubjective experience and parent-child relations. Throughout the gendered nature of care is critically examined. This includes the controversial belief that women are better at caring than men and whether this likely to change with contemporary shifts in parenting and gender relations. Similarly, the sensitive domain of the quality of care and how to assess whether care has broken down are also debated, alongside a consideration of what constitutes a good enough family. The Capacity to Careprovides a unique theorization of the nature of selfhood, drawingon developmental and object relations psychoanalysis, philosophical and feminist literatures. It will be of interest to social scientist studying gender development, gender relations and the family as well as for those interested in the ethics of care debate.