Images of Bodily Decay and the Social Organization of Care Work

Based on a reinterpretation of 105 relations between the elderly and their adult children, this article discusses incontinence as a social and cultural phenomenon. Social norms and cul-tural symbols that surround the intimate parts of the body affect the way care work is orga-nized, gendered, culturally understood, and socially stratified. To lose bodily control over bodily fluids seems to put the individual’s identity and human dignity at risk. The disturbing presence of odors, sights, and textures seems to have a disruptive effect on close relation-ships. The article further discusses how bodily dimensions of care add new burdens to mod-ern family life in different social contexts and contribute to expand the gender gap in differ-ent cultures of care. This seems to be related to how ideas of individualism structure and are structured by economic and social conditions in which people live their everyday lives