What is the relationship between dependence and care?
To care can be understood as an action, as looking after, providing for, the needs of something or someone. To do something with care suggests an attentiveness, a consideration to do something correctly, to avoid risk or damage.
To care can be understood as an emotion, to feel concern, interest or to attach importance to something, someone. To be caring suggests empathy, awareness, and understanding.
Without the ‘to’, care becomes an idea and an ideal, referring to the provision of what is deemed necessary to the health, welfare or protection of something or someone.
To depend has antithetical meanings. To depend can be understood as being controlled or determined by. Yet it can also be understood as being able to trust or rely on.
To be dependent can be understood as being dependent on someone or something for support or as being unable to do without.
Dependence taken as more of a concept encompasses those opposed realities and is taken to refer to either the state of relying on orbeing controlled by someone or something else.
To ask what the relationship is between dependence and care can appear quite simple. Yet, this takes on a newfound complexity once the plurality of meanings each word can take on is acknowledged.
This essay will address the ambiguous nature of the relationship between dependence and care. Firstly, it will look how such a relationship is fundamentally malleable. Then, the issue of the valuation of the relationship will be assessed. Lastly, it will focus on the question of whether such a relationship is inherently one sided.
Tracing back the genealogy of dependency, Fraser and Gordon (2003) outline the historically changing attitude towards it. Indeed, in preindustrial English, dependency was used to refer to subordination and to be a dependent meant to depend on another for support. The dichotomy between the dependent and independent individual became more pronounced in the eighteenth century when an individual could be said to ‘have independency, meaning an ownership of property a fortune that made it possible to live without labouring’. As such, the idea of being dependent was constructed in opposition to this and simply meant having to ‘gain one’s livelihood by working for someone else’. However, given that this was the condition of most people such as wage laborers, serfs or slaves, ‘dependency’ was seen as ‘a normal, as opposed to deviant, condition, a social relation as opposed to an individual trait. Thus it did not carry any moral opprobrium’. This changed with the advent of preindustrial society; dependency became deviant and stigmatised, and shame entered the equation, with ‘certain dependencies [becoming] shameful while others were deemed natural and proper’. Dependence took on gendered and racialised forms, and, additionally, was imbued with negative connotations in entering the industrial era. New meanings of independence subsequently transformed meanings of dependency. Given that ‘wage labour became increasingly normative [as well as] increasingly definitive of independence – it was precisely those excluded from wage labour who appeared to personify dependency’. For instance, Fraser and Gordon (2003) highlight how several registers of dependency seemed to converge in the figure of the housewife, a figure which ‘melded traditional sociolegal and political dependency with her more recent economic dependency in the industrial order’. As such, the woman was seen to be dependent on the fathers who ‘headed households’ and represented their members. Here, care comes into relation with dependence insofar as it can be argued that women are ‘cared for’ by their husbands, given that their dependency means they cannot care for themselves in the way men can, while also being expected to care for the children and the household.
This dynamic between care and dependence changes in post-industrial times. New understandings of dependency are required with the ‘massive entry of women into low-wage service work’, the increasing commonality of divorce and the changes in gender norms proliferating new family forms, rendering the ‘male breadwinner/female homemaker’ model less attractive. Further, ‘it no longer goes without saying that a woman should rely on a man for economic support, nor that mothers should not also be ‘workers’’. Meanings of dependency are thus renegotiated in accordance with the broader context within which it is enmeshed. This alters the relation between dependence and care; while women increasingly become dependent on themselves rather than on their husbands, their responsibilities of care are unchanged. As such, the association of independence with wage labour complicates care. The idea of working and ‘self-supporting’ individuals, which used to be ‘previously restricted to white workingmen [but is now being applied] increasingly to everyone, is pleasant conceptually but it ‘supposes that the worker has access to a job paying a decent wage and is not a primary parent’. However, this idea is more of an ideal insofar as many women find that it is impossible to be dependent on oneself while also having primary caregiving responsibilities.
Thus, the relationship between dependence and care can be malleable due to how they are viewed and understood socially.
Also of note is how dependence and care are inherently malleable by nature, as meanings and understandings are further negotiated through lived experiences. Sometimes, care is not expressed in expected ways. For instance, when care and dependence and intricately mixed, unexpected forms of care and dependence might be created. Han (2012) draws the attention to the surprising tenacity of care, illustrating this with Sra Flora and her family. She notes how despite her daughter and her boyfriend’s addiction to pasta base (a cocaine-based paste similar to crack cocaine) which led aggressive behaviour, worsening of debts and no financial contribution to the household, Sra Flora continued to care for them both. This form of care is a kind of ‘active awaiting’ (Cavell, 2005), a ‘patience for the possible which draws on the hope that relations could change with time’ (Han, 2012). However, the situation changed for Sra Flora when her daughter, Florcita was hospitalised because of her boyfriend Kevin’s aggressiveness. This prompted Sra Flora to ask them to leave the family home. Yet, even then, care doesn’t disappear, it is simply transformed. Indeed, although Sra Flora requested Florcita and Kevin leave, she did make arrangements with a neighbour for them to rent a room in a house down the street, she still brought food to them each day. Han observes that ‘with the move, Sra Flora and Florcita had, for the moment, crafted a new way to maintain proximity while distancing Kevin from the home’. Hence, care is not a given, rather it is responsive to new developments, adjusting to changes in dependency, whether it be dependence on drugs or on the financial and emotional support and security of Sra Flora.
The idea of care as responsive is interesting in thinking of care as cyclical. Dependence and care are both subject to change, they can evolve. For instance, the ‘who’ can be interchangeable, with the dependent becoming the carer or the carer becoming dependent, either due to illness, drugs, or other external factors. Han points out that when Sra Flora fell ill, her partner Rodrigo felt a sort of moral indebtedness to her, felt he couldn’t leave her. Roles are reversed for a while, Sra Flora is cared for, becomes dependent, instead of bearing her usual responsibilities to care for those dependent on her, pointing to the non-static nature of the relationship between care and dependence.
Moreover, Garcia (2010) highlights how, in situations of interdependence between heroin addicts, here a mother and her daughter, responsibility is exchanged. In a drug raid on her mother’s (Eugenia) trailer, Bernadette faced the consequences in her place. Bernadette argues that her mom had ‘more to lose’ than she did, explaining that she suffered from depression and had tried to commit suicide. Thus, Bernadette, through her silence, took the blame, and with it, responsibility, for the drug possession. Garcia notes that here, Bernadette’s silence ‘was intended to protect her mother’ who, arguably, was the most vulnerable of the two, ‘but Bernadette was also a mother, was also vulnerable – as were her own children’. What can be understood from this is that care, much like dependence, is not straightforward. Care is improvised in a context where dependence varies – sometimes the mother requires more help and attention, sometimes it is the daughter – and in which caring duties are ascribed and re-ascribed. This challenges assumptions about who needs care, who gives care, how dependency affects care. Care thus appears to be responsive and adaptive to varying realities of dependency. Hence the relationship between care and dependence is in fact multiple. These relationships vary in terms of types and degrees. When thinking of care and its rapport to dependence or vice versa, it is interesting to think of whether the care is personal or professional, indifferent or attached, anonymous or involved; similarly, is it dependence on someone or something, someone known or a stranger. Care and dependence bleed into each other; sometimes care creates dependence, reliance, sometimes dependence is created by an abundance of care, resulting in a lack of independence, sometimes dependence enables care, with credit systems indebting but also conferring dignity.
Of interest is how these relationships between dependence and care might be valued in the face of such a plurality of understandings of what dependence and care might mean, as well as what they might mean in relation to each other. To illustrate the issue of how to assign meaning and value to such complex and changing relationship, disability will be considered. Rivas (2004) outlines a paradox: people with disabilities are dependent upon personal assistants for their independence. For instance, as one consumer of personal assistants highlights, his parents did all the work now done by his personal assistant until he was thirteen, which was when they hired someone to help with homework, giving him his first taste of independence. To him, not living with his parents anymore was equated with independence. Interestingly, what mattered to him was not that he was receiving care but rather, what type of care he was receiving. He argues that being independent not only means living apart from his parents, but, crucially, not having them care for him. Yet, the fact that he believes he got his ‘first taste of independence’ when he was thirteen, when his parents were paying for a personal attendant, attests to the fact that his sense of independence is not contingent on his ability to financially deal with his own care. Rivas highlights that, rather, his sense of independence rests on ‘the fact that his care is somebody’s paid work. Indeed, although their work may appear identical, paid caregivers deliver a different cultural good than family members or friends can provide: personal assistants deliver the illusion of independence’. Here, the type of care received greatly influences how his dependence is perceived. Money creates a link between two strangers and a strange balance between independence stemming from dependence.
Further, the value of the relationship lies in not only what type of care, but also how that care is delivered. Independence goes hand in hand with agency; yet in the case of people with disabilities, the meaning of agency is negotiated. As Rivas observes, ‘personal attendants, beyond performing caregiving tasks, participate in creating an illusion of independence for the disabled individuals they serve. Together with the consumers of their services, personal attendants accomplish this task by transferring the authorship of many caregiving tasks from the worker to the consumer’. This relation of dependence as a sort of steppingstone for independence thus creates subjectivities; ‘care receivers are constructed as independent, and care givers are constructed as invisible’. It is, many believe, this effacement of the care giver that attenuates the reality of dependency. Yet, precisely this invisibility can be argued to be one of the most caring parts of the job; it is selfless to become invisible, and at times detriment because it poses the issue of value, how can one value something one cannot fully appreciate?
In a way, the value of the relationship between dependence and care lies in perspective and asymmetrical realities. There is a tension between what personal attendants would qualify their care as versus what the care receiver would qualify it as. Many personal attendants pride themselves in their ability to be caring, to empathise, to really learn how to listen to verbal and non-verbal cues, they believe their care can be equated to a form of love, a love they voluntarily give because they deem it important to make the receiver of their care feel ‘like they’re still humans who deserve respect, love and care’. In stark contrast, the care receiver is sometimes oblivious to this generous expressing of affection, simply interpreting it as an execution of a job for which they are remunerated. As Rivas sums up, ‘the consumers felt that they had fully purchased the time of their personal attendant; therefore, there was nothing the attendant did within his or her work time that the consumer did not consider part of the job. When the job expands to include everything the attendant does, it becomes impossible for the caregiver to express real caring because nothing [they do] is understood as a gift’. The boundaries of care, but also dependence, are, in these examples, not clearly cut and certainly not understood in the same way by people experiencing very different lives. As such, this further complicates the relation between dependence and care, because even within an established relation, the understandings of what each entail might differ greatly. Again, how these boundaries bleed into one another is only understood in relation to perspective. In fact, the selflessness involved in making one’s self invisible, of scarifying a significant part of one’s agency to enable another’s to take centre stage, can be considered a sacrifice of sorts. Because the care giver has put the premium on caring for others above all else, care bleeds into dependence, the care giver becomes dependent on the care receiver to acknowledge this selfless and caring act; yet if the care receiver does not see how their dependence enables the dependence of the caregiver, the relationship between care and dependence is not understood in all ways care and dependence can be expressed.
A shift in perspective can be exemplified in Stevenson’s work on care in the Canadian artic (2014) and how both care and dependence can be collective and impersonal. When dependence can be considered collective, as is the case with the suicide epidemic among Nunavuts, caring becomes a collective task. The collective quality of bureaucratic measures in place, responsibility also becomes, in a way collective, altering the definitions and understandings of care and dependence. Stevenson notes that ‘capturing at risk aboriginal clients may reduce the number of suicides. It is also one way to ensure that one is not held responsible for missing the warning signs. By turning people who are suffering into ‘clients’ who become objects of suicide risk management tools, the counsellor no longer has to cope with the existential anxiety that is raised by suicide’. Here, collective care becomes impersonal, indifferent, mirroring a dependence that is a generalised one rather than specific, while enables the absolving of responsibility. Suicide hotlines are exemplar of how the boundary of dependence can be blurry, thus shifting the responsibility and altering the care in response. This indifferent and anonymous form of care and its relation to specific manifestations of dependence asks an important question about the value of care in relation to dependence; that is, does care have to be caring? Are there situations in which emotional distancing and anonymity are more desirable in dealing with certain types of dependence, or, more importantly, on different levels? Indeed, care and dependency vary in relationality not only to each other but also in the levels in which they can be expressed – for instance a drug user can be dependent on their family or friends in the same way that they can be dependent on the state or health services.
The multiplicity of forms and manifestations of the relation between dependence and care invites to consider the issue of whether care or dependence is inherently one-sided. Drug addicts, disabled people, or individuals facing economic uncertainty, are more often than not, in one way or another presented as being a burden. It is thus easy to assume that those who are dependent will always be so and that those giving the care are more often on the giving end than the receiving end. However, instead of thinking of care and dependence in a binary opposing the two, perhaps it is of interest to think of it as a network within which individuals are engaged in different forms of care, in differing degrees, and dependent not on just one thing or person but rather dependent in a way that is specific to them. For instance, drug users are an interesting illustration insofar as it can be very personal or impersonal. Indeed, addicts are enmeshed in different networks of dependence and care; they are all at once dependent on drugs, clinics, their family. The care network they are inscribed in is also varied, perhaps relatives or friends care for them, or the nurses at the clinic. Yet these nurses themselves are inscribed in different relations and networks of care, they care for numerous addicts, therefore are sometimes faced with the reality of relapse of addicts. Their answer, however, that ‘we can’t save someone who doesn’t want to be saved’ points to the idea that care and dependence transcend the boundary, it is not simply just one dependent and one carer; rather the relationship is a multifaceted one.
Hence, it would seem that dependence and care are ubiquitous but not in the ways one might expect. Considering that the concepts of dependence and care might best be understood in terms of networks shows how individuals can be caught between worlds of dependence and caring. The example of disability is interesting to come back to insofar as, while the personal attendants take pride in knowing exactly the needs and desires of their disabled employer, ‘there is however, no reciprocal gaze on the caregiver. It can be argued that the disabled employer’s bodily needs are so great that this focus is justified’, yet it is important not to underestimate the needs of the caregiver, which are ‘not as obviously embodied, but may nevertheless be great’ (Rivas, 2004). In fact, when they are women, and they usually are, their ‘care workload generally extends beyond their clients, into their families. Often, they have no one to take over their care responsibilities or to help them when they need care themselves’. To think of the relation between care and dependence as a network it is necessary to acknowledge the gaps in such a network, the ‘one sided’ relationships.
The ubiquity of care and dependence is at times overlooked. Yet, as Joan Tronto cautions, ‘not noticing how pervasive and central care is to human life, those who are in positions of power and privilege can continue to ignore and degrade the activities of care and those who give care’. The meaning and stigma around dependence need to be re-work and re-evaluated. Given their interrelatedness, if dependence isn’t stripped of its negative connotations, care, which is fundamental to human life and development, will be tainted.
Ultimately, the relationship between dependence and care depends, not only on our perspective and experience, but also how we conceptualise it, given that this informs such perspectives and experiences. Fraser and Gordon (2003) outline that ‘the vast majority of mothers of all classes and all educational levels ‘depends’ on another income. It may come from child support … or from a husband who earns $20,000 while she averages $7,000. But ‘dependence’ more accurately defines dads who count on women’s unwaged labour to raise children and care for the home’. When value is prescribed to reproductive labour, then dependence can be seen as more of a mutual influence.
To conclude, to single out a relationship between dependence and care would be quite an impossible task. Indeed, the relation between the two is much more complex and changing than it may appear. Yet, the way we conceptualise them both, and their relation to each other can have an important impact on how they are experienced and valued. Therefore, to deconstruct the ideal of independence is essential to casting dependence in another light than negative, thus enabling care to be rightly acknowledged and positively valued.
Bibliography
Han, C. 2012. Life in Debt. Univ of California Press. (Intro and Ch1 and Ch5).
Stevenson, Lisa 2014. Life Beside Itself: Imagining Care in the Canadian Arctic. Oakland: University of California Press.
Garcia A. (2010). The Pastoral Clinic: Addiction and Dispossession Along the Rio Grande. Berkeley: Univ. Calif. Press
Fraser, N., & Gordon, L. (2003). A Genealogy of Dependency: Tracing a Keyword of the U.S. Welfare State. In E. F. Kittay & E. K. Feder (Eds.), The Subject of Care: Feminist Perspectives on Dependency. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
Rivas, L. M. (2004). Invisible Labors: Caring for the Independent Person. In B. Ehrenreich & A. R. Hochschild (Eds.), Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy. Henry Holt and Company