A feminist public ethic of care meets the new communitarian family policy

Ethics

Volumn 111, Issue 3, 2001, Pages 523-547

  Kittay, Eva Feder ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0038968189     PISSN: 00141704     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/233525     Document Type: Article

References (58)

1. For an interesting attempt by a champion of rights to reconcile rights with communitarian concerns, see Alan Gewirth, The Community of Rights (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996).
2. Marilyn Friedman, What Are Friends For? Feminist Perspectives on Personal Relationships and Moral Theory (Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press, 1993).
3. Martha Nussbaum forcefully makes this argument in her effort to reconcile feminism and liberalism in Sex and Social Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 59-67.
4. Amitai Etzioni, ed., The Essential Communitarian Reader (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998), p. xxxiv.
5. Ibid., p. xxv.
6. I, for one, welcome family-oriented policies such as the National Family Policy, argued for by the new communitarian David Anderson in "Part of the Project of Building a Progressive Coalition: Uniting Working Mothers and Welfare Mothers behind a National Family Policy," in Inherent and Instrumental Value, ed. John M. Abbarno (Bethesda, Md.: Intentional Scholars, in press).
7. Etzioni, ed., p. xxviii.
8. Ibid., xxviii-xxix. For an earlier and excellent critique of William Galston's position regarding the family, see Iris Young, "Mothers, Citizenship, and Independence," Ethics 105 (1995): 535-57.
9. Ibid., xxviii-xxix. For an earlier and excellent critique of William Galston's position regarding the family, see Iris Young, "Mothers, Citizenship, and Independence," Ethics 105 (1995): 535-57.
10. David Popenoe, "Family Values: A Communitarian Perspective," in Macro SocioEconomics: From Theory to Activism, ed. David Sciulli (Armonk, N.Y.: Sharpe, 1996), pp. 165-84, p. 171. In case one might think that this language does not exclude the possibility of such relationships among same-sex couples, Popenoe argues explicitly against countenancing homosexual families as sites for raising children (although he does not advocate the prohibition of homosexual sex). He writes, "Nuclear familialism and homosexualism as lifestyles incorporate contradictory values and views of the world. It would be a moral contradiction for society to affirm and promote the nuclear family, with its basis in heterosexuality and its generation and nurturance of children, while at the same time affirming and promoting all the values of the homosexual subculture" (p. 177). His discussion of homosexual "lifestyles" focuses largely on the pre-AIDS male homosexual culture of promiscuous sex. It pays little attention to the monogamy of lesbian couples who are not infrequently rearing children in stable homes.
11. Ibid., p. 173.
12. Ibid., p. 169.
13. For the most complete account of this position, see Eva Feder Kittay, Love's Labor: Essays on Women, Equality and Dependency (New York: Routledge, 1999).
14. Philip Selznick, "Social Justice: A Communitarian Perspective," in Etzioni, ed., p. 65.
15. See Martha Albertson Fineman, The Neutered Mother, the Sexual Family and Other Twentieth Century Tragedies (New York: Routledge, 1995), for a related use of the term.
16. See Eva Feder Kittay, "Taking Dependency Seriously: The Family and Medical Leave Act Considered in Light of the Social Organization of Dependency Work and Gender Equality," Hypatia 10 (1995): 8-29.
17. Virginia Held makes this point powerfully in regard to the child's dependence in "Non-Contractual Society: A Feminist View," Canadian Journal of Philosophy 13 (1987): 111-37.
18. In still largely agrarian communities in developing nations, where the devastation of colonialism has left its mark, the vulnerability is often still greater because resources are so scarce, men migrate to cities, women immigrate to find employment as domestics, and some societies express a cultural traditionalism by confining women to the domestic sphere, restraining their access to paid employment. See Amartya Sen, "Gender and Cooperative Conflict," in Persistent Inequalities, ed. Irene Trinker (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 123-49. Also see Martha Chen, "A Matter of Survival: Women's Right to Employment in India and Bangladesh," in Women, Culture and Development: A Study of Human Capabilities, ed. Martha Nussbaum and Jonathan Glover (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995), pp. 37-57.
19. In still largely agrarian communities in developing nations, where the devastation of colonialism has left its mark, the vulnerability is often still greater because resources are so scarce, men migrate to cities, women immigrate to find employment as domestics, and some societies express a cultural traditionalism by confining women to the domestic sphere, restraining their access to paid employment. See Amartya Sen, "Gender and Cooperative Conflict," in Persistent Inequalities, ed. Irene Trinker (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 123-49. Also see Martha Chen, "A Matter of Survival: Women's Right to Employment in India and Bangladesh," in Women, Culture and Development: A Study of Human Capabilities, ed. Martha Nussbaum and Jonathan Glover (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995), pp. 37-57.
20. T. H. Marshall, "Citizenship and Social Class," in States and Societies, ed. David Held et al. (New York: New York University Press, 1983).
21. Nancy Fraser and Linda Gordon, "A Geneology of Dependency: Tracing a Keyword of the U.S. Welfare State," Signs 19 (1994): 309-36.
22. "The typical woman can expect to spend seventeen years caring for children and eighteen years caring for older family members. Nine out of ten women will be caregivers for either children or parents or both" (Women's Action Coalition, WAC Stats: The Facts about Women [New York: New Press, 1993], p. 42 , citing Sara E. Rix, The American Woman, 1990-91 [New York: Norton, 1992]).
23. "The typical woman can expect to spend seventeen years caring for children and eighteen years caring for older family members. Nine out of ten women will be caregivers for either children or parents or both" (Women's Action Coalition, WAC Stats: The Facts about Women [New York: New Press, 1993], p. 42 , citing Sara E. Rix, The American Woman, 1990-91 [New York: Norton, 1992]).
24. Linda J. Waite points out that while men, both black and white, enjoy a "wage premium" if they are married - 6.3 percent for white men and 4.5 percent for black men -women who do enjoy a wage premium enjoy a much smaller one, not quite 3 percent, and many women, mostly white women, "pay a marriage penalty, in hourly wages of over 4 percent" ("Social Science Finds: Marriage Matters," in Etzioni, ed., pp. 247-55, p. 250). White married women without children do receive a marriage premium and may be in the best position to take advantage of job opportunities that have been opened to women. Although Waite's figures do not uncover differences between married and unmarried women with children with respect to their ability to delegate dependency responsibilities, poverty figures illuminate the vast differences between those who can comfortably pay others to take over dependency responsibilities and those whose potential earning can scarcely cover childcare.
25. Carol Pateman, "The Patriarchal Welfare State," in Democracy and the Welfare State, ed. Amy Gutman (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988), pp. 231-60, p. 252.
26. Pateman posits Wollestonecraft's Dilemma as the complement to what Donald Moon has called "Hegel's Dilemma" ("The Moral Basis of the Democratic Welfare State," in Gutman, ed., pp. 27-53). Hegel's Dilemma is that while the redistribution of wealth can mitigate poverty, such redistribution (through cash transfers or the provision of goods and services in kind) may, on the one hand, undermine a citizen's sense of participation in community and so undermine the citizen's sense of self-worth. If, on the other hand, the state steps in to create jobs, such action interferes with the autonomous functioning of the market, and so disrupts the machine that generates wealth.
27. "Currently, only about one-half of the custodial parents due child support receive full payment. About 25 percent receive partial payment and 25 percent receive nothing" (U.S. Department of Health and Human Service Administration for children and families office of child support enforcement, "Child Support Enforcement: Twenty-Third Annual Report to Congress," June 24, 1998 [http:/www.acf.dhhs.gov/programs/cse/rpt/annrpt 23/appendixH.html]).
28. John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), p. 302.
29. Etzioni, ed., p. xxxiv.
30. Ibid.
31. Perhaps the best spin one can give on the conservative argument against welfare adopts this logic, with the added premises that the United States is a society in which there are no social, legal, or political barriers to self-support, and it is also a country in which resources are plentiful enough to permit anyone who is capable and willing to be self-supporting to be so. Since, furthermore, conservatives leave little leeway for the possibility that anyone might be incapable of self-support, the only other explanation for anyone who depends on state support is that they are irresponsible.
32. See below for a more extended discussion of this point.
33. I do not mean to suggest that we can only derive the obligation to care from our own desire to be cared for. One could invoke various other bases for such a duty, e.g., utilitarian grounds, or theological ones, such as that found in Robert M. Veatch, The Foundations of Justice (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986). Veatch uses theological grounds to claim equality for the person with mental retardation. In my book Love's Labor, I also lean heavily on the idea that we are obligated to provide care to those who are vulnerable to our actions, a conception of obligation for special relations developed by Robert Goodin in Protecting the Vulnerable (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1985). Here I invoke the more Kantian universalization because I take it to be a very widely accepted way to establish obligation, and it is, I think, quite self-evident in this context. Of course, it suffers from some of the problems that justifications by universalization frequently do. For example, some may claim that if they were rendered incapable of being self-sufficient, they would prefer to be allowed to die. This may display lack of moral imagination. Many who, in their prime, have made such declarations have found that when they reached that point in life, they very much wanted to live, and desired to receive the care they needed to make their life tolerable. And others who might maintain such a position find that when they have a family member who is incapacitated, they want that loved one to continue to be cared for as long as they can sustain a reasonably good quality of life. As a concept of reciprocity, I prefer to invoke the notion that we are obligated to provide care because we have all, at some point in our lives, been the recipient of care.
34. I do not mean to suggest that we can only derive the obligation to care from our own desire to be cared for. One could invoke various other bases for such a duty, e.g., utilitarian grounds, or theological ones, such as that found in Robert M. Veatch, The Foundations of Justice (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986). Veatch uses theological grounds to claim equality for the person with mental retardation. In my book Love's Labor, I also lean heavily on the idea that we are obligated to provide care to those who are vulnerable to our actions, a conception of obligation for special relations developed by Robert Goodin in Protecting the Vulnerable (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1985). Here I invoke the more Kantian universalization because I take it to be a very widely accepted way to establish obligation, and it is, I think, quite self-evident in this context. Of course, it suffers from some of the problems that justifications by universalization frequently do. For example, some may claim that if they were rendered incapable of being self-sufficient, they would prefer to be allowed to die. This may display lack of moral imagination. Many who, in their prime, have made such declarations have found that when they reached that point in life, they very much wanted to live, and desired to receive the care they needed to make their life tolerable. And others who might maintain such a position find that when they have a family member who is incapacitated, they want that loved one to continue to be cared for as long as they can sustain a reasonably good quality of life. As a concept of reciprocity, I prefer to invoke the notion that we are obligated to provide care because we have all, at some point in our lives, been the recipient of care.
35. Anita Silvers has pointed this out in a commentary on Love's Labor (Wake Forest Law School, Law, Culture and Humanities Working Group, 1998).
36. Compare the above delineation of responsibilities with the following statement from the Responsive Communitarian Platform: "A communitarian perspective . . . mandates attention to what is often ignored in contemporary politics: the social side of human nature; the responsibilities that must be borne by citizens, individually and collectively, in a regime of rights; the fragile ecology of families and their supporting communities; the ripple effects and long-term consequences of present decisions" ("The Responsive Communitarian Platform: Rights and Responsibilities, 'Preamble,'" in Etzioni, ed., p. xxv).
37. These obligations on the part of the dependent hold as well toward those who pay the caregiver - they, too, are responsible for the care, although indirectly, and so deserve reciprocation from the cared-for to the extent that the dependent is not fully dependent. At times, there is a difference between those in our lives who give us direct hands-on care and those who are, in general, responsible for our well-being and who pay the hands-on person to care for us. To the extent that the one who pays has a more extensive role, for example, she is the default back-up person responsible for assuring hands-on care, I consider both her and the hands-on caregiver to be dependency workers. The cared-for has the responsibilities to both, and situations of conflict between these have to be resolved case by case. There are also responsibilities that the cared-for has to the provider of the resources for care, again to the extent that she is able to reciprocate. We have obligations to a mother who has played the role of sole provider, just as we have to a father who provided daily hands-on care. To a state that enables our caregivers to have cared for us, we have obligations - obligations generally discharged through paying taxes when we have an income.
38. For a very different view, see Anita Silvers, David Wasserman, and Mary B. Mahowald, Disability Difference, Discrimination (Lanhani, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998). For a criticism of Silvers's view from a dependency perspective, see my essays, "At Home with My Daughter," in Americans with Disabilities, ed. Leslie Pickering Francis and Anita Silvers (New York: Routledge, 2000), pp. 64-80, and "When Care Is Just and Justice Is Caring: The Case of the Care for the Mentally Retarded," Public Culture, "Special Issue on Disability Criticism," (2001), in press.
39. For a very different view, see Anita Silvers, David Wasserman, and Mary B. Mahowald, Disability Difference, Discrimination (Lanhani, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998). For a criticism of Silvers's view from a dependency perspective, see my essays, "At Home with My Daughter," in Americans with Disabilities, ed. Leslie Pickering Francis and Anita Silvers (New York: Routledge, 2000), pp. 64-80, and "When Care Is Just and Justice Is Caring: The Case of the Care for the Mentally Retarded," Public Culture, "Special Issue on Disability Criticism," (2001), in press.
40. For a very different view, see Anita Silvers, David Wasserman, and Mary B. Mahowald, Disability Difference, Discrimination (Lanhani, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998). For a criticism of Silvers's view from a dependency perspective, see my essays, "At Home with My Daughter," in Americans with Disabilities, ed. Leslie Pickering Francis and Anita Silvers (New York: Routledge, 2000), pp. 64-80, and "When Care Is Just and Justice Is Caring: The Case of the Care for the Mentally Retarded," Public Culture, "Special Issue on Disability Criticism," (2001), in press.
41. For examples of this view, see Popenoe (discussed above), and William Galston in "A Liberal-Democratic Case for the Two-Parent Family," in Etzioni, ed., pp. 145-55.
42. Currently there is every indication that a marriage is seen as a relationship based on love and sexual compatibility, as one based on affection and companionship rather than on economic or reproductive considerations. And there is no indication that such a view will become less rather than more prevalent.
43. This is most recently evidenced by the popularity of welfare "reform," which eviscerated support for families with dependents in the United States and of cutbacks in social services that help support dependency work globally under the name of "structural reform."
44. See Carol B. Stack, All Our Kin: Strategies for Survival in a Black Community (New York: Harper & Row, 1974).
45. Legal arrangements in most states favor the nuclear family. Some new communitarians oppose changing such legislation. They also oppose marriage counselors who treat divorce favorably, and they want to see divorce become more difficult to obtain. See, e.g., William J. Doherty "How Therapists Threaten Marriages," in Etzioni, ed., pp. 157-66. Contrast these views with that of Carol Levine, "AIDS and Changing Concepts of the Family," Milbank Quarterly 68 (1990): 33-57 ; also Carol Levine, Families and Health Care Project: Guiding Principles for Effective Partnerships between Family Caregivers and the Health Care System (New York: United Hospital Fund, 1998). Levine, after extensively working with AIDS patients and their caregivers, concluded that "Family" should be broadly defined. "Legal definitions of 'family' do not reflect the diversity of relationships that often make up an individual's support network. Family caregivers include people related by blood, marriage, or adoption, as well as individuals who have longstanding emotional ties to the care recipient" (p. 2).
46. Legal arrangements in most states favor the nuclear family. Some new communitarians oppose changing such legislation. They also oppose marriage counselors who treat divorce favorably, and they want to see divorce become more difficult to obtain. See, e.g., William J. Doherty "How Therapists Threaten Marriages," in Etzioni, ed., pp. 157-66. Contrast these views with that of Carol Levine, "AIDS and Changing Concepts of the Family," Milbank Quarterly 68 (1990): 33-57 ; also Carol Levine, Families and Health Care Project: Guiding Principles for Effective Partnerships between Family Caregivers and the Health Care System (New York: United Hospital Fund, 1998). Levine, after extensively working with AIDS patients and their caregivers, concluded that "Family" should be broadly defined. "Legal definitions of 'family' do not reflect the diversity of relationships that often make up an individual's support network. Family caregivers include people related by blood, marriage, or adoption, as well as individuals who have longstanding emotional ties to the care recipient" (p. 2).
47. Legal arrangements in most states favor the nuclear family. Some new communitarians oppose changing such legislation. They also oppose marriage counselors who treat divorce favorably, and they want to see divorce become more difficult to obtain. See, e.g., William J. Doherty "How Therapists Threaten Marriages," in Etzioni, ed., pp. 157-66. Contrast these views with that of Carol Levine, "AIDS and Changing Concepts of the Family," Milbank Quarterly 68 (1990): 33-57 ; also Carol Levine, Families and Health Care Project: Guiding Principles for Effective Partnerships between Family Caregivers and the Health Care System (New York: United Hospital Fund, 1998). Levine, after extensively working with AIDS patients and their caregivers, concluded that "Family" should be broadly defined. "Legal definitions of 'family' do not reflect the diversity of relationships that often make up an individual's support network. Family caregivers include people related by blood, marriage, or adoption, as well as individuals who have longstanding emotional ties to the care recipient" (p. 2).
48. Robert M. Solow, reviewer, "On Golden Pond (Review of Gray Dawn by Peter G. Peterson)," New York Review of Books 46 (May 6, 1999), p. 17. Also see Fred Deven, Sheila Inglis, Peter Moss, and Pat Petrie, "Childcare Key to Women's Employability: State of the Art Review on the Reconciliation of Work and Family Life for Men and Women and the Quality of Care Services," Equal Opportunities Magazine: Quarterly Magazine of the Medium-Term Community Action Programme on Equal Opportunities for Women and Men (August 1998): 15-18.
49. Robert M. Solow, reviewer, "On Golden Pond (Review of Gray Dawn by Peter G. Peterson)," New York Review of Books 46 (May 6, 1999), p. 17. Also see Fred Deven, Sheila Inglis, Peter Moss, and Pat Petrie, "Childcare Key to Women's Employability: State of the Art Review on the Reconciliation of Work and Family Life for Men and Women and the Quality of Care Services," Equal Opportunities Magazine: Quarterly Magazine of the Medium-Term Community Action Programme on Equal Opportunities for Women and Men (August 1998): 15-18.
50. I would argue, following Dorothy Roberts in "Racism and Patriarchy in the Meaning of Motherhood," Journal of Gender and the Law 1 (Spring 1993): 1-38, that the biological role in procreation or other biological connection is a, but not the sole, basis for assigning prime responsibility for a dependent. See also Dorothy Roberts, "Why Race Matters in Child Welfare Interventions," Nomos (in press).
51. I would argue, following Dorothy Roberts in "Racism and Patriarchy in the Meaning of Motherhood," Journal of Gender and the Law 1 (Spring 1993): 1-38, that the biological role in procreation or other biological connection is a, but not the sole, basis for assigning prime responsibility for a dependent. See also Dorothy Roberts, "Why Race Matters in Child Welfare Interventions," Nomos (in press).
52. See Fineman, The Neutered Mother, for an argument that sexual intimacy between two adults should not be legally regulated and should not form the basis for the legal sanctioning of parent-child relations.
53. See chap. 2 of Kittay, Love's Labor, for a fuller account of the requirements of care and the importance of relation.
54. A more substantial demand would be a "right to care" such as has been argued for by legal theorist Robin West. See Robin West, "A Right to Care," in Theoretical Perspectives on Dependency and Women, ed. Eva Feder Kittay and Ellen Feder (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, in press).
55. David L. Olds, Charles R. Henderson, Jr., Harriet J. Kitzman, John J. Eckenrode, Robert E. Cole, and Robert C. Tatelbaum, 'Prenatal and Infancy Home Visitation by Nurses: Recent Findings," Future of Children ("Home Visiting: Recent Program Evaluations") 9 (1999): 44-66.
56. See Theodore R. Marmor, Jerry L. Mashaw, and Philip L. Harvey, America's Misunderstood Welfare State: Persistent Myths, Enduring Realities (New York: Basic Books, 1990) for a very helpful discussion of the various forms welfare policies take and the merits of insurance models.
57. Diemut Bubeck, Care, Gender, and Justice (Oxford: Claredon, 1995).
58. It may also be that costs will be too great as long as there is other labor to exploit beyond our national borders - that is, if taxes go too high, industry will move elsewhere. It is beyond the scope of this article to discuss the international dimensions of exploitation and dependency work, but it is certainly not a coincidence that poor and immigrant women are so frequently the ones who care for our children and our parents.