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Accumulating care

Mothers beyond the conflicting temporalities of caring and work

School of Political and Social Inquiry, Monash University VIC 3800, Australia, janemaree.maher{at}arts.monash.edu.au

Women who mother and undertake paid work are often represented as moving between separate spheres of caring and paid labour whilst facing intractable temporal conflicts. Despite this conflict, often represented as a ‘care time deficit’, mothers in western societies have continued their movement into the paid workforce. I examine the different temporal modes of paid work and caring labour that women undertake and argue that there are temporal commonalities as well as conflicts in paid work and care. I propose that women’s diverse labours across these spheres are directed towards accumulating care, and suggest women may be generating a new temporal framework for work and care beyond conflicting schedules. I argue that women’s practices do occur across complex and potentially conflictive temporalities but are unified by a focus on the accumulation of care. Recognizing women’s capacity to draw together and synthesize work across diverse temporal orders may allow for greater understanding of how women create and use time to give care.

Key Words: care • cumulative time • employment • mothering

Time & Society, Vol. 18, No. 2-3, 231-245 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/0961463X08099950


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