Care labour and temporal vulnerability in woman–child relations

In this chapter, we use ‘care labour’ as a lens to theorise relations between women and children, and to identify potential intersections and antagonisms between feminism and the politics of childhood. While care is widely recognised as a universal feature of human experience, and closely related to the concept of vulnerability, it remains a highly politicised topic in both research and policy. This chapter asks: is it possible to create a conceptual frame of care relations that takes both women and children into account, one that does not de facto hold one group’s needs, views or rights above the other’s? Our response is a call for greater attention to the temporal aspects of care and of vulnerability - in particular, to dimensions of the life course and to generational relations