Men as Carers in Long-Term Caring: Doing Gender and Doing Kinship

Abstract

In this article, we examine men’s involvement in long-term care for the elderly or sick relatives to locate changes in gender and kinship relations. Research on care has highlighted the role of gender, but has been blind as regards the link between care and kinship, which is taken as a given. We consider care as work and care as kinship by means of the concepts of “doing gender” and “doing kinship.” We use data from the qualitative research we are undertaking in Catalonia (Spain) and this text is based on 49 interviews. We found that men are becoming new agents in care, due to social and cultural changes which are leading to a renegotiation of how care is allocated. Caring produces gender and produces kinship, and as such the involvement of men in care resignifies the contents of these relations and calls the nature of these changes into question.