Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T02:48:31.707Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

At the Intersection of Intimacy and Care: Redefining “Family” through the Lens of a Public Ethic of Care

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 September 2005

Traci M. Levy
Traci M. Levy
Affiliation:
Adelphi University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The institution of the family has changed, but U.S. public institutions and policies generally have not kept pace. In response, a number of feminist theorists have argued that we should recognize and support more diverse family forms. They argue that equality, respect for personal autonomy, recognition of diversity, and facilitating relationships of care demand such a move. Building on their work, I explicitly situate the necessity of redefining “family” within a public ethic of care and offer a comprehensive working definition of family that focuses on recognizing relationships that combine intimacy and care. In so doing, I address how to handle biological ties without excluding or marginalizing other bases upon which people form families.The author would like to thank the following individuals for sharing their expertise and comments on earlier versions of this manuscript: Eileen Botting, Fred Dallmayr, Daniel Engster, Neve Gordon, Jyl Josephson, Michael Kirsch, Victor Levy, Hugh Wilson, Christina Wolbrecht, Catherine Zuckert, the editors of Politics & Gender, and the anonymous reviewers. An earlier draft of this piece was presented in Chicago at the 2002 National Conference of the Midwest Political Science Association.

Type
Research Article
Information
Politics & Gender , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , March 2005 , pp. 65 - 95
Copyright
© 2005 The Women and Politics Research Section of the American Political Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

American Bar Association, Working Group on Same-Sex Marriages, and Non-Marital Unions. 2004. “White Paper: An Analysis of the Law Regarding Same-Sex Marriage, Civil Unions, and Domestic Partnerships.” http://www.abanet.org/family/whitepaper/fullreport.pdf (March 23, 2005).
Baker, Paula. 1984. “The Domestication of Politics: Women and American Political Society, 1780–1920.” American Historical Review 89 (3): 620–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bubeck, Dietmut. 1995. Care, Gender, and Justice. New York: Clarendon.
Carlson, Allan. 2003. “Marriage on Trial: Why We Must Privilege and Burden the Traditional Marriage Bond.” Lecture delivered through the auspices of the Family Research Council, Washington, DC, June 12.
Dietz, Mary. 1985. “Citizenship with a Feminine Face: The Problem with Maternal Thinking.” Political Theory 13 (1): 19–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Engster, Daniel. 2004. “Care Ethics and Natural Law Theory: Toward an Institutional Political Theory of Care.” Journal of Politics 66 (February): 113–35.Google Scholar
Erikson, Eric. 1963. Childhood and Society. New York: Norton.
Erikson, Eric. 1982. The Life Cycle Completed: A Review. New York: Norton.
Etzioni, Amitai. 1996. The New Golden Rule: Community and Morality in a Democratic Society. New York: Basic Books.
Farrell, Betty. 1999. “Marriage.” In Family: The Making of an Idea, an Institution, and a Controversy in American Culture. Boulder, CO: Westview, 93–134.
Fineman, Martha Albertson. 2001. “Contract and Care.” Chicago-Kent Law Review 76 (3): 1403–40.Google Scholar
Fineman, Martha Albertson. 2004. The Autonomy Myth: A Theory of Dependency. New York: New Press.
Fisher, Berenice, and Joan C. Tronto. 1991. “Toward a Feminist Theory of Care.” In Circles of Care: Work and Identity in Women's Lives, ed. Emily Abel and Margaret Nelson. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Fraser, Nancy. 1997. “Culture, Political Economy, and Difference: On Iris Young's Justice and the Politics of Difference.” In Justice Interruptus: Critical Reflections on the ‘Postsocialist’ Condition. New York: Routledge, 189–205.
Fraser, Nancy, and Linda Gordon, 1994. “A Genealogy of Dependency: Tracing a Keyword of the U.S. Welfare State.” Signs 19 (2): 1–28.Google Scholar
Fredriksen, Karen I. 1999. “Family Caregiving Responsibilities Among Lesbians and Gay Men.” Social Work 44 (2): 142–55.Google Scholar
Friedan, Betty. [1973] 1984. The Feminist Mystique. New York: Dell.
Gallagher, Maggie. 2004. “Does Sex Make Babies? Marriage, Same-Sex Marriage and Legal Justifications for the Regulation of Intimacy in a Post-Lawrence World.” Quinnipiac Law Review 23 (2): 447–72.Google Scholar
Galston, William. 1991. Liberal Purposes. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Gilligan, Carol. [1982] 1996. In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Gornick, Janet, and Marcia Meyers. 2003. Families That Work: Policies for Reconciling Parenthood and Employment. New York: Russell Sage.
Hacker, Jacob S. 2004. “Privatizing Risk Without Privatizing the Welfare State: The Hidden Politics of Social Policy Retrenchment in the United States.” American Political Science Review 98 (May): 243–60.Google Scholar
Hafen, Bruce C. 1991. “Individualism and Autonomy in Family Law: The Waning of Belonging.” Brigham Young University Law Review 1991 (1): 1–42.Google Scholar
Harvard Law Review. 1991. “Note: Looking for a Family Resemblance: The Limits of the Functional Approach to the Legal Definition of Family.” Harvard Law Review 104 (May): 1640–60.Google Scholar
Hawkins, Alan J., Shawn L. Christiansen, Kathryn Pond Sargent, and E. Jeffrey Hill. 1995. “Rethinking Fathers' Involvement in Child Care: A Developmental Perspective.” In Fatherhood: Contemporary Theory, Research, and Social Policy, ed. William Marsiglio. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Heidegger, Martin. [1977] 1993. “The Letter on Humanism.” In Martin Heidegger: Basic Writings, ed. David Farrell Krell. USA: HarperSanFrancisco: 213–65.
Institute for Health & Aging, University of California, San Francisco. 1996. “Chronic Care in America: A 21st Century Challenge” for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. www.rwjf.org/files/publications/other/ChronicCareinAmerica.pdf (July 5, 2005).
Josephson, Jyl. 2001. “Liberal Justice and the Political Economy of Children's Well-being.” New Political Science 23 (3): 389–406.Google Scholar
Josephson, Jyl, and Cynthia Burack. 1998. “The Political Ideology of the Neo-Traditional Family.” Journal of Political Ideologies 3 (June): 213–31.Google Scholar
Kamerman, Sheila B. [1996] 1999. “Child and Family Policies: An International Overview.” In Children, Families, and Government, ed. Edward F. Zigler, Sharon Lynn Kagan, and Nancy W. Hall. New York: Cambridge University Press, 31–48.
Kamo, Yoshinori, and Min Zhou. 1994. “Living Arrangements of Elderly Japanese and Chinese in the United States.” Journal of Marriage and the Family 56 (3): 544–58.Google Scholar
Kittay, Eva Feder. 1999. Love's Labor: Essays on Women, Equality, and Dependency. New York: Routledge.
Kittay, Eva Feder. 2001. “A Feminist Public Ethic of Care Meets the New Communitarian Family Policy.” Ethics 111 (April): 523–47.Google Scholar
Kreider, Rose M., and Jason M. Fields. 2001. Number, Timing, and Duration of Marriages and Divorces: Fall 1996. Current Population Reports, 70-80. Washington, DC: U.S. Census Bureau.
Law Commission of Canada. 2001. Beyond Conjugality: Recognizing and Supporting Close Personal Adult Relationships. www.lcc.gc.ca/en/themes/pr/cpra/report.asp#002e (March 27, 2005).
Lehr, Valerie. 1999. Queer Family Values: Debunking the Myth of the Nuclear Family. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Mincy, Ronald B., and Hillard Pouncy. 1999. “There Must Be 50 Ways to Start a Family.” In The Fatherhood Movement: A Call to Action, ed. Wade F. Horn, David Blankenhorn, and Mitchell P. Pearlstein. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 83–104.
Minow, Martha. [1991] 1998. “Redefining Families: Who's In and Who's Out?” In Families in the U.S. Kinship and Domestic Politic, ed. Karen V. Hansen and Anita Ilta Garey. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 7–19.
Minow, Martha, and Mary Lyndon Shanley. 1996. “Relational Rights and Responsibilities: Revisioning the Family in Liberal Political Theory and Law.” Hypatia 11 (1): 4–29.Google Scholar
National Family Caregivers Association (NFCA). 2000. “Family Caregiving Statistics.” http://www.helpingcaregivers.com/caregivers.asp (July 5, 2005).
Nicholson, Linda. 1997. “The Myth of the Traditional Family.” In Feminism and Families, ed. with an introduction by Hilde Lindemann Nelson. New York: Routledge, 27–42.
Noddings, Nel. 1984. Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education. California: University of California Press.
Nussbaum, Martha C. 2000. Women in Human Development: The Capabilities Approach. New York: Cambridge University Press.
O'Connor, Julia S., Ann Shola Orloff, and Sheila Shaver. 1999. States, Markets, Families: Gender, Liberalism and Social Policy in Australia, Canada, Great Britain and the United States. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pivens, Frances Fox. 2002. “Policy Matters.” Boston Review (February/March). http://bostonreview.mit.edu/BR27.1/piven.html (April 28, 2005).Google Scholar
Polikoff, Nancy D. 2003. “Ending Marriage as We Know It.” Hofstra Law Review 32 (1): 201–32.Google Scholar
Popenoe, David, Jean Bethke Elshtain, and David Blankenhorn, eds. 1996. Promises to Keep: Decline and Renewal of Marriage in America. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Rae, Hazel. 1992. “Fictive Kin as a Component of the Social Networks of Older People.” Research on Aging 14 (2): 226–47.Google Scholar
Robinson, Fiona. 1999. Globalizing Care: Ethics, Feminist Theory, and International Relations. Boulder, CO: Westview.
Robles, Bárbara J. 2003. “Latino Families: Sharing and Exchanging Resources.” Prepared for the Annie E. Casey Foundation. http://www.utexas.edu/lbj/faculty/robles/research/pdf/Latino_Resource0803.pdf (July 21, 2004).
Sandel, Michael. 1984. “The Procedural Republic and the Unencumbered Self.” Political Theory 12 (1): 81–96.Google Scholar
Scannapieco, Maria, and Sondra Jackson. 1996. “Kinship Care: The African American Response to Family Preservation.” Social Work 21 (March): 190–96.Google Scholar
Sevenhuijsen, Selma. 1998. Citizenship and the Ethics of Care: Feminist Considerations on Justice, Morality and Politics. Trans. from Dutch by Liz Savage. New York and London: Routledge.
Shanley, Mary Lyndon. 1997. “Fathers' Rights, Mothers' Wrongs: Reflections on Unwed Fathers' Rights and Sex Equality.” In Feminist Ethics and Social Policy, ed. Patrice DiQuinzio and Iris Young. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 95–124.
Shanley, Mary Lyndon. 2001. “Fathers' Rights, Mothers' Wrongs, and Children's Needs: Unwed Fathers and the Perpetuation of Patriarchy.” In Making Babies, Making Families. Boston: Beacon Press, 44–75.
Shanley, Mary Lyndon. 2004. Just Marriage, ed. Joshua Cohen and Deborah Chasman for Boston Review. New York: Oxford University Press.
Stack, Carol B. 1979. All Our Kin: Strategies for Survival in a Black Community. New York: Harper and Row.
Struening, Karen. 1999. “Familial Purposes: An Argument Against the Promotion of Family.” Policy Studies Journal 27 (3): 477–93.Google Scholar
Struening, Karen. 2002. New Family Values. Rowman & Littlefield.
Tronto, Joan. [1993] 1994. Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care. New York and London: Routledge.
Tronto, Joan. 1998. “An Ethic of Care.” Generations 22 (Fall): 15–20.Google Scholar
U.S. Census Bureau. 1995. “Statistical Brief: Sixty-Five Plus in the United States.” Last revised July 27, 2001. www.census.gov/population/socdemo/statbriefs/agebrief.html (July 5, 2005).
U.S. Census Bureau. 2003a. “Children's Living Arrangements and Characteristics: March 2002.” Issued in June 2003. www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/p20-547.pdf (January 19, 2004).
U.S. Census Bureau. 2003b. “Poverty Rates by Race and Hispanic Origin: 2001 and 2002.” Last revised September 26, 2003. www.census.gov/hhes/www/img/incpov02/fig08.jpg (April 30, 2005).
U.S. Census Bureau. 2004. “Current Population Survey: Definitions and Explanations.” Last revised January 2004. http://www.census.gov/population/www/cps/cpsdef.html (August 4, 2004).
U.S. Department of Labor. 2004. “Compliance Assistance—Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA).” http://www.dol.gov/esa/whd/fmla (August 4, 2004).
U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics. 1997. “Issues in Labor Statistics: How Long is the Workweek?” http://www.bls.gov/opub/ils/pdf/opbils09.pdf (January 15, 2002).
U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics. 2001. “Employment Characteristics of Families Summary,” Table 6. http://www.bls.gov/news.release/famee.nr0.htm (August 4, 2004).
Wagner, David M. 2001. “Balancing ‘Parents Are’ and ‘Parents Do’ in the Supreme Court's Constitutionalized Family Law: Some Implications of ALI's Proposals on De Facto Parenthood.” From “The Symposium on the ALI's Family Dissolution Principles,” Brigham Young University School of Law, Provo, UT, February 1–3. http://www.law2.byu.edu/alisymp/Papers/Wagner0306.htm (March 23, 2005).
Weston, Kath. 1992. Families We Choose. New York: Columbia University Press.
White, Julie Anne. 2000. Democracy, Justice, and the Welfare State. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.
Woodhouse, Barbara Bennett. 1996. “‘It All Depends on What You Mean by Home’: Toward a Communitarian Theory of the ‘Nontraditional’ Family.” Utah Law Review 569.Google Scholar
Young, Iris Marion. 1990. Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Young, Iris Marion. 1997. Intersecting Voices. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Young, Iris Marion. 2000. Inclusion and Democracy. New York: Oxford University Press.