CHILDREN AND THE FEMINIST ETHIC

OF CARE

TOM COCKBURN This article looks at the recent contributions made

University of Bradford
by feminists who advocate a distinctive ‘ethic of
Key words: care’ to replace the conventional ‘ethic of rights’.
children, ethic of care, feminism, justice,
rights The article explores ways in which the ethic of care
could be utilized and applied to the children’s rights
Mailing address:
Tom Cockburn context. After looking at the important feminist
Department of Social Sciences criticisms of conventional rights-based approaches,
and Humanities
University of Bradford, it is argued that there needs to be some caution
Bradford BD7 1DP, UK.
[email: T.D.Cockburn@Bradford.ac.uk]
applied to the feminist ethic of care, if it is to be
successfully applied to the context of children.
Childhood Copyright © 2005
SAGE Publications. London, Thousand Oaks These cautions are that it is important to recognize
and New Delhi, Vol 12(1): 71–89.
www.sagepublications.com the contested nature of care and not to valorize the
10.1177/0907568205049893
perspectives of carers over those being cared for.
Second, the feminist ethic of care might lead to a
‘needs-based’ discourse, an approach that is
unsatisfactory in its implications for children’s
rights. Finally, conceptions of justice and equality
must not be dropped from political arguments.
Rather, their limitations must be acknowledged and
then used strategically and partially. However,
despite these cautions, the feminist ethic of care
remains a constructive approach to the children’s
rights context as it emphasizes responsibilities and
relationships, the concrete contexts of caring
interdependencies, and allows children to be active
social players with a voice rather than passive
recipients of care and rights. It is hoped that this
article might serve as both a corrective and
conceptual enrichment of the feminist ethic of care.

The caring of children has for many generations been a major source of pre-
occupation for academics, journalists, policy-makers and educators.
However, over the past 20 years there has been a re-evaluation of the con-
cept of ‘care’, particularly by feminists. This work focused primarily on the
ways in which women undertook the bulk of caring for others (Graham,
1983), the devaluation of caring work in both the formal and informal work
sectors (Abbott and Wallace, 1990), the loss of carers’ citizenship access

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(Lister, 1998) and while gender does not determine carers (as some men do
perform caring roles and work), care certainly involves gendering (Morgan,
1996). It is well documented that there are increased levels of sympathy and
support given to male carers, whereas for women carers there is a certain
‘natural’ expectation of their role (Dalley, 1988). Such a re-evaluation of
empirical interpretations ran parallel to feminist philosophical and theoreti-
cal production of a distinctly feminist ethic.
It needs stating from the beginning that feminist ethics are not a homo-
geneous set of ideas (Desautels and Waugh, 2000; Koehn, 1998). There are,
however, some important common themes that feminist ethics can be placed
in. The first, and perhaps most important, contribution offered by feminism
concerns the critique of the myth of the ‘isolated individual’ advocated by
(male) enlightenment theorists. Such an individual forms a powerful and
mesmerizing backdrop to modern (liberal) theory from English social con-
tract theorists, Cartesian and Baconian scientific epistemologies, up to and
including contemporary liberal theorists such as those put forward by John
Rawls (1999). Of course, critiquing the concept of ‘individualism’ has been
a defining feature of the discipline of sociology. However, recent feminist
interventions in these debates have generated a particular and unique set of
ideas and theories with important repercussions for the sociological study of
childhood. Furthermore, these contributions, as expected from a feminist
emancipatory starting point, have important implications for political
endeavours around children’s rights.
Carol Gilligan noted that differences between the sexes and women’s
subordination was centred on the different moral ‘strengths’ of men and
women. Gilligan suggests that:
Sensitivity to the needs of others and the assumptions of responsibility for tak-
ing care lead women to attend to voices other than their own and to include in
their judgement other points of view. Women’s moral weakness, manifest in an
apparent diffusion and confusion of judgement, is thus inseparable from
women’s moral strength, an overriding concern with relationships and responsi-
bilities. (Gilligan; 1982: 16–17)

Women judge themselves in terms of their ability to care. Gilligan continues:

Women’s place in man’s life-cycle has been that of nurturer, caretaker, and
helpmate, the weaver of those networks of relationships on which she in turn
relies. But while women have thus taken care of men, men have, in their theo-
ries of psychological development, as in their economic arrangements, tended to
assume or devalue care. When the focus on individuation and individual
achievement extends into adulthood and maturity is equated with personal
autonomy, concern with relationships appears as a weakness of women rather
than as a human strength. (Gilligan, 1982: 17)

Following this, writers such as Joan Tronto (1993) have identified an

ethic of care that differs from and contrasts with what Carol Gilligan refers
to as an ‘ethics of rights’. This occurs in three ways: (1) an ethics of care

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involves different moral concepts: emphasizing responsibilities and relation-

ships rather than rules and rights. (2) It is bound to concrete situations rather
than being abstract and informal. Morality is adjoined to social practices and
customs, and to people’s feelings and opinions, and this is how good judge-
ment can be realized. (3) The ethics of care can be described as a moral
activity, the ‘activity of caring’, rather than a set of principles which can be
followed. Importantly, Tronto argued that while care work is gendered, an
ethic of care is a more general stance that is not limited to the practices of
women.
These three aspects are, I argue, an important way forward for further-
ing the interests and status of children. Deane Curtin (1991) questions the
use of the rights discourse at all and has identified six problems with the
rights approach: that it adheres to a universalism; that it fails to apply ethics
to context; that it is adversarial; that it conceptualizes persons as
autonomous rather than relational; that judgements in search of objectivity
and rationality elide aspects of experience; and finally, that these concepts
are premised upon a disembodied rationalism. I look at these problems and
juxtapose the ways in which rights-based discourse excludes both women
and children. I then discuss debates within feminism on the ethic of care and
identify some of the conceptual adjustments that are needed to apply the
term to the social study of childhood and avocations of children’s ‘rights’.
Importantly, these centre around the contested nature of care, the dangers of
utilizing a ‘needs-based’ discourse1 (Fraser and Gordon, 1994; Stephens,
1995) and finally the requirement to retain conceptions of equality and jus-
tice in the advocacy of children’s ‘rights’. I conclude by arguing for reten-
tion of the rights-based discourse within the framework of an ethic of care.
The feminist ethic of care, by emphasizing human interdependence, offers a
fresh perspective on the debates around children and citizenship (see
Cockburn, 1998).
Before furthering this discussion, it is worth challenging the common-
place assumption that children are simply the recipients of care. An under-
standing of the complexity of adult–child caring relationships is crucial in
challenging the paternalism associated with care, providing recognition of
children as active agents within this relationship and bolstering children’s
claim to justice. There are many examples of children who care for others in
Britain, especially if we look back in time. Historian Lloyd de Mause (1974)
has suggested that from the 11th century (the earliest date where there are
adequate historical sources for commentary) to the 16th century, many older
brothers or sisters were by necessity compelled to act as carers towards
younger siblings. Given the low average life expectancy, it may tentatively
be assumed that most young people (especially girls) would at some stage be
expected to be primary carers for younger siblings, sick or disabled parents
and family members. Furthermore, many children, from the age of 7, were
expected to be apprenticed or hired out as servants and to provide care for

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other families. Before the First World War, the largest single occupation cat-
egory was domestic service, numbering over 3 million. Domestic service for
many girls/women was chosen as a short-term job before marriage or find-
ing more meaningful employment. Therefore, we can surmise that a fair pro-
portion of domestic servants were between 12 (the school-leaving age) and
18.
There is a considerable and growing literature on the lives and needs
of informal carers in the community (Ungerson, 1990), there is far less writ-
ten about the particular needs and experiences of children who care. For
instance, the 1990 United Kingdom General Household Survey of carers
indicated that there were approximately 6.8 million carers nationwide look-
ing after a sick, disabled or elderly person (Office of Population Censuses
and Surveys, 1992). It is difficult to say how many of these carers are under
18. However, Parker (1992) estimated that 17 percent of carers aged 16–35
had responsibilities before their 16th birthday; put another way, 212,000
people provided care before they were 16 and 68,000 of these had responsi-
bilities for a parent. In my view, this seems an underestimation as there are
still taboos around children who care and data collected by voluntary agen-
cies suggest a much higher figure (Department of Health, 2003).
In addition to being passed over by official data collection procedures,
children who care were hardly mentioned in British policy documents until
the mid-1990s. For instance there is no mention of child carers in the
National Health Service and Community Care Act (1990), despite the Act
being premised on the assumption that it was listening to carers and provid-
ing for their needs.
There are, however, studies that have recognized the contributions of
young carers (Carers National Association, 1992). Academic studies have
also improved our understanding of the importance of the issue of children
who care (see Aldridge and Becker, 1993; Becker, 1995). Becker et al.
(1998) have noted that approximately 23 percent of under-16-year-olds live
in a household with one family member ‘hampered in daily activities by (a)
chronic physical or mental health problems, illness or disability’ (Becker et
al., 1998: 15).
Thus, in the past 10 years there is also developing recognition of chil-
dren as carers being active agents, not merely passive recipients of care.
This has been stimulated by empirical sociological studies on children caring
for family members (see, for instance, Dearden and Becker, 2000) or from a
theoretical re-evaluation to the ‘work’ that children do in caring for them-
selves (Qvortrup, 1985, 2001). Furthermore, as Faulstich Orellana (2001)
has argued, children as carers exercise agency, not only in family situations,
but also in the contexts of schools and communities. This recognition of the
activities of those ‘cared for’ has created a dilemma for some feminist com-
mentators. On the one hand, recognition of children and adults who are
‘cared for’ as a social group with legitimate and important voices may place

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additional strain on women carers’ active public engagement. On the other

hand, it is necessary to embrace differences, a crucial component of recent
feminism, and feminists recognized the importance of a gendered analysis of
children’s activities of caring.

Using an ethic of care to critique an ethic of rights

Universalism
Feminists have long argued against the universalism assumed in liberal
rights-based approaches (Plumwood, 1993), instead, advocating an ethic that
is pluralist. What conventional universalist arguments have assumed is a par-
ticular perspective that is male, western, middle class and white, and applied
this to all circumstances. Such conceptions seek to then create the world in
its own image, irrespective of whether anybody actually agrees or disagrees
with this image. For instance, Nancy Leys Stepan (1998: 29) has argued:
‘All universalisms . . . result from the elevation of a particularism to a uni-
versal status, so that the act of universal inclusion is always at the same time
an act of exclusion.’ Similarly, Seyla Benhabib (1992) has argued that uni-
versalistic contract theories from Thomas Hobbes to John Rawls lead to a
privatization of women’s experiences. The ‘relevant other’ in social contract
theories are never sisters but always brothers. The vision of the self that
most feminists would be familiar with is one that is premised on a celebra-
tion of difference. This acknowledgement of difference and the plurality of
modes of humanity are incompatible to universalism.
This tension with universalism can be identified in the Lawrence
Kohlberg and Carol Gilligan debates. Kohlberg argued that care, friendship
and relationships fall into a ‘personal’ rather than a ‘moral’ issue. Kohlberg
(1984) begins his definition of morality with Thomas Hobbes’s early attack
on the theological conception of nature. The transition to modernity resulted
in a privatization of the self’s relationship with the cosmos. Furthermore, the
invention of a ‘public sphere’ as distinct from a ‘private sphere’ resulted in
the domestic-familial sphere being privatized and deemed irrelevant to the
smooth operating of the public world of work and politics. Hobbes infa-
mously stated in Philosophical Rudiments Concerning Government and
Society, ‘let us consider men . . . as if even now sprung out of the earth, and
suddenly, like mushrooms, come to full maturity, without all kind of engage-
ment with each other’ (quoted in Benhabib, 1992: 156). Seyla Benhabib sees
this as ‘the narcissist who sees the world in his own image’ (Benhabib, 1992:
156). She notes this is a strange world, ‘in which boys are men before they
have been children; a world where neither mother, nor sister, nor wife exist’
(Benhabib, 1992: 157).
Behhabib attacked the modernist notion of ‘the self’ that conceptually
becomes part of what John Rawls (1999) identifies as the ‘generalized

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other’. With this idea of the ‘generalized other’, men are conceptually sepa-
rated from:
. . . his place in society, his class position or status; nor does he know his for-
tune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, his intelligence and
strength, and the like. Nor, again, does anyone know his conception of the good,
the particulars of his rational plan of life, or even the special features of his psy-
chology such as his aversion to risk or liability to optimism. (Benhabib, 1992:
161)

Thus with the notion of the ‘generalized other’, the self is understood as
devoid of specific characteristics and is separated from the day-to-day world
of relationships with others throughout social life.
Instead, following Gilligan’s work, Benhabib argues that without the
necessary epistemic information about a concrete other, as opposed to
Rawls’s (1999) notion of a ‘generalized other’,2 no coherent test of univer-
salizability can be carried out. According to the principle of the ‘generalized
other’, each individual is a moral person endowed with the same moral
rights, is reasoning and acting, has a sense of justice and possesses a vision
of the good. The ‘concrete other’, on the other hand, begins with the
assumption that every moral person is a unique individual, with his or her
own life history, dispositions, needs and limitations. Importantly, the ‘con-
crete other’ is firmly located within the context of relationships to others.
Within conceptions of the ‘generalized other’, the everyday moral interac-
tions with concrete others are ‘bracketed off’ and placed within the devalued
private realm. Thus, women and children’s activities become invisible to
universal moral theory. Benhabib argues that by assuming a concrete other:
. . . neither justice nor care are primary; they are each essential for the develop-
ment of the autonomous, adult individual out of the fragile and dependent
human child. Not only as children, but also as concrete embodied beings with
needs and vulnerabilities, emotions and desires we spend our lives caught in the
‘web of human affairs’, in Hannah Arendt’s words, or in networks of ‘care and
dependence’ in Carol Gilligan’s words. (Benhabib, 1992: 189)

I do not see adults as necessarily ‘autonomous’ and children as essen-

tially ‘fragile and dependent’, as Behabib seems to imply in this quotation.
Rather, both children and adults are at times autonomous and at other times
fragile and dependent. However, Benhabib’s use of the idea of a concrete, as
opposed to a generalized, other is useful to locate children within political
theory. The concrete other is far more predisposed towards an ethic of care
that emphasizes responsibilities, relationships, practices, customs, feelings
and activities, in other words an idea of the self that actually engages in the
daily life worlds of children, women and men.

Contextualization
For most feminists,3 a liberal conception of ethics is too formalistic, that is
the treatment and application of ethics and rights are neutral with respect to

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context. Feminist approaches to ethics, on the other hand, wish to emphasize

context. Again taking Benhabib as a case in point:
Women’s moral judgement is more contextual, more immersed in the details of
relationships and narratives. It is not a sign of weakness or deficiency, but a
manifestation of moral maturity that sees the self as being immersed in a net-
work of relationships with others. Thus the respect in each other’s needs and the
mutuality of effort to satisfy them sustain moral growth and development.
(Benhabib, 1992: 149)

This emphasis on contextualism that Benhabib discusses is of crucial

importance to the sociological study of childhood. Children’s worlds (like
the worlds of adults!) occur within networks of relationships, with parents,
teachers, friends, peers, siblings, etc. It is important to recognize children as
significant actors within these networks and any judgements of rights, needs
or protection must place children within these networks. Failure to do so, by
recourse to abstract principles, will result in an impoverished treatment of
social networks. Indeed, an attention to context will place children within
the context of the here and now rather than in terms of their ‘futurority’ (dis-
cussed in Lee, 2001). That is, contextualism will recognize the life world of
children in the present and pertain to specific questions about children’s
immediate rights, needs and identities based within the context of their
social networks. Much of the rights-based discourse perceives children in
terms of their potentiality rather than as moral actors in the present. 4
Grappling with the application of abstract and universal rights to the specific
social context is something that takes a great deal of time and thought in
their operationalization. The question then is why do rights-based commen-
tators, such as Rawls, attempt to sanitize abstract rules from the complexity
of context? Surely the context is the starting point of building rules and deci-
sions, rather than applying rules to the ‘inconvenience’ of social context.

Adversarialism and relationality

The rights approach is adversarial. To have a right is to have a claim to
something against someone. Personhood in contractarian theory is linked to
the possession of rights. Moral dilemmas take the form of conflicts over
rights more often solved through the identification of the highest principle.
Feminist approaches, on the other hand, conceptualize persons as relational
rather than autonomous. Thus, if theory is premised on the principle of rela-
tionalism rather than ‘economic man’ it is believed that adversarialism
would become subsumed under the higher principles of nurturance and trust.
Virginia Held (1987, 1995), for instance, criticizes contractarian social theo-
ry for taking the model of human motivation based on ‘possessive individu-
alism’ (see also MacPherson [1962] for a critique). If, on the other hand, one
looks at the relationship between mother and child, we see human reciproci-
ty based on characteristics of nurturing and dependence, rather than compe-
tition and autonomy. In the case of the mother–child relationship, mutual

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respect and equality of worth are of more importance than any contractarian
principles based on equal legal rights. The moral repertoire also needs to
include principles of cooperation, intimacy, trust, connection and compas-
sion to be emphasized as important sources of moral reasoning. Second,
Held argues that principles of non-intrusion are unsatisfactory as a primary
moral principle, because it precludes the possibility of dependence as a focus
of moral deliberation. Third, Held argues the mother–child bond throws light
on the privacy of personhood, and ethical reasoning should start from the
processes of connection and individuation.
Other feminists have cautioned that this principle should not lead to
‘moral motherhood’, where ‘motherhood’ provides a paramount perspective
on ethical issues (Sevenhuijsen, 1998). Indeed, there are often feelings of
conflict, discord and ambivalence associated with experiences of care – a
subject I return to later. Furthermore, this valorization of the mother–child
relationship may risk reintroducing traditional gender arrangements and
assumptions into ethical theory. Rosemary Tong (1997), by way of contrast
with Held, identifies friendship as perhaps the better paradigm for ideas of
human relationships. Tong argues it is based:
. . . more on need than desire, more on love than obligation, and more on trust
than fear, friendship relationships, especially those involving shared projects as
well as mutual emotional satisfaction and economic support, offer all the moth-
er–child relationship offers and more. . . . Rarely does the typical mother–child
(or mothering person–child) relationship evolve into a friendship as such; for
the most part, it remains instead, if only in very subtle ways, a relationship
between unequals. (Tong, 1997: 48)

Lorraine Code (1995) has identified two important principles of the

feminist ethic of care that is built on a rejection of adversarial and
autonomous starting points. These are, first, that the feminist ethic of care
assumes people recognize and treat others as different and take into account
other people’s worldview. Second, a feminist ethic of care assumes that
needs and narratives are not taken as absolute but are located, interpreted
and judged in specific contexts. This is contrasted with the view that ethical
judgements are objective and rational and do not depend on affective aspects
of experience. This abstract model of ‘man’ runs against the experiences of
real women, men, girls and boys, where our lives are characterized by mean-
ingful and real relationships with others. These experiences are as much
characterized by our dependencies as ‘rights’. As Sevenhuijsen (1998: 22)
has argued: ‘care takes place in all kinds of contexts, from child-rearing
practices to intimate relations, to the social services, education and political
deliberation.’ Thus ‘abstract autonomy in fact overlooks what it is that
makes care an element of the human condition, i.e., the recognition that all
people are vulnerable, dependent and finite, and that we all have to find
ways of dealing with this in our daily existence and in the values which
guide our individual and collective behaviour’ (Sevenhuijsen, 1998: 28).

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Embodiment
Rights-based discourse emphasizes the rational at the expense of the body
and embodiment. Feminists have long maintained that women have been
identified with the body (Bordo, 1989). The seemingly disembodied,
autonomous subject who exercises authority closes ‘the self’ off from vul-
nerable aspects of human life such as natality, nurture, insecurity, fragility
and ambiguity. Indeed, feminists have noted how representations of gender
and race have been located within ‘naturally’ grounded entities. This history
of the naturalized body has depicted members of some groups as lesser or
even non-individuals. Thus the history of embodiment is seen in terms of the
history of citizenship and its limits. As Nancy Leys Stepan has argued: ‘it is
no accident that “race” and “sex”, in their modern, primarily naturalised or
biological meaning emerged in the eighteenth century, when the new politi-
cal concept of the individual self and the individual bearer of rights was
being articulated’ (Leys Stepan, 1998: 30). The ontologizing via embodi-
ment of sex and racial differences renders groups as distinct and differentiat-
ed from the white, male norm. Thus, communities and individuals were
placed outside the liberal universe of freedom, equality and rights. Not
everybody, including and perhaps especially children, could position them-
selves as an abstract individual.
Feminists have convincingly argued that the science of human differ-
ence is not something that belongs to the past but is something recreated in
the scientific practice of today. Such scientific practices have similarly
placed children as ontologically and irreducibly different from adults.
Feminists again have been instrumental in arguing that all natural facts are
social facts reflecting the values of the society in which they are produced
and are thus unstable in their meanings. This focus on embodiment, history
and science is reflected in recent reappraisals of the ways biological and psy-
chological science has represented children (Hendrick, 1997). Children’s
bodies are represented as becoming with the introduction of terms such as
‘development’, ‘schooling’, ‘paediatrics’, etc. that place an emphasis on the
differences between the bodies of adults and children. In short, those wish-
ing to present a holistic and positive representation of children must treat a
discourse that elides the process of embodiment with caution.

Feminist adjustment of the ethic of care

The feminist ethic of care has stimulated a considerable degree of debate
among feminist theorists. Interestingly, these provide an important insight
into some of the limitations of the application of the ethic of care to children.
The main adjustments centre around: (1) the contested nature of care, (2)
some dangers associated with the ‘needs-based’ discourse and the dangers of
dispensing with conceptions of (3) equality and justice from political argu-
ments.

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The contested nature of care

As stated at the beginning of the article, there is an increasing recognition
that care is a very contested concept. For instance, Hilary Graham (1991)
focuses on the ways in which feminist theory, up to the 1990s, has taken the
perspective of white middle-class women. Feminist theorists had looked into
their own personal problems of caring for those they are related to by birth
or marriage. Unpaid work of caring for kin is conceptually understood
entirely in terms of gender. Yet this focus does not necessarily apply to an
analysis that looks at issues of race and class. For instance, black women’s
experiences have been shaped historically by a ‘colonial labour system’,
where black women’s work outside their families took precedence over the
needs of their own individual families. For black women, it is the absence
rather than the presence of the ability to care for one’s own family that struc-
tures their experiences (Spelman, 1991).5
Care must be applied to the ideological functions served by various
moral theories. Pervasive structural relationships of power and powerless-
ness between groups tend to foster ideological justifications for the mainte-
nance of such relationships. Care discourses can run the risk of being used
for ideological purposes where ‘differences’ are defined in the service of the
dominant group. As Narayan argues, ‘Notions of differences in vulnerabili-
ties and capabilities should be recognized as a contested terrain, requiring
critical attention to who defines these differences as well as their practical
implications’ (Narayan, 1995: 136). Or, as Fox (1995) demonstrates, the
notion of care can be seen as something positive, enabling and empowering
but can swiftly become something that is possessive and controlling.
Second, until recently most feminist research had focused on the carer
with little room for the voice of those being ‘cared for’. There is thus very
little notion of a ‘relationship’ of caring. The critical or radical perspective of
disability politics countered this trend, including those advocating a feminist
model of disability (Lloyd, 2001, Morris, 1996), and those of lesbian theo-
rists (Aronson, 1998). This intervention is valuable as it first allows the
‘cared for’ a voice in a previously silent relationship. Additionally, it demon-
strates that care could often lead to a loss of certain socially valued skills and
an increasing sense of dependence. Anita Silvers (1995), for instance, argues
that, in the case of disabled people, the ethic of care can valorize the per-
spective of the care-givers at the expense of the recipients of care. Within
these relationships those being cared for must profess incompetence even
when they are more competent than those offering care. Furthermore, the
cared for must have a self-sacrificial and compliant behaviour towards those
offering care. This form of relationship is clearly unequal and to remove
principles of equality will offer few alternative arguments for those receiving
care. Silvers argues:
Far from vanquishing patriarchal systems, substituting the ethics of caring for
the ethics of equality threatens an even more oppressive paternalism. We can

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grasp this by noting how helping relationships are voluntary, but asymmetrical-
ly so. Help-givers choose how they are willing to help, but help-takers cannot
choose how they will be helped, for in choosing to reject proffered help one
withdraws oneself from being helped as well as from being a helping relation-
ship. To relate to others primarily by being helped by them, then, implies subor-
dinating one’s choices to one’s caretakers, at least insofar as one remains in the
state of being helped. (Silvers, 1995: 40–1)

This recognition of the contested nature of care has direct relevance to

children’s experiences within schools but also in families. The conflicts and
contradictions in care is something that children and parents well recognize.
Incompetent children demand more care than competent children and this
forms the fault lines of many grievances within families, and especially
between mothers and children. A factor that is absent from Virginia Held’s
(1987) mother–child relationship that she idealizes as a basis for ethical con-
siderations.

Needs-based politics
It is believed by some feminists that the ‘enlightenment tradition’ of equality
imposes uniformity on moral agents and strips them of their differentiating
characteristics (Heldke, 1988; McLaughlin, 2003). The western tradition of
equality is said not to treat characteristics such as race, sex, culture, gender,
class and age as authentic markers of distinct moral identities. Instead, the
ethic of equality strips individuals of their distinctive and often shared par-
ticularities into a universal and uniform model of personhood. It needs to be
noted here that it is not just feminists who have been concerned with this
derogation of difference. Indeed, some theories of multiculturalism perceive
the lack of recognition of difference as being one of the major forms of
oppression (Taylor, 1992).
The sense of justice that the universal egalitarian ethic encourages is
one that constructs an ‘impartial’ point of view of what is an appropriate
level of equality. Yet how can this be ‘impartial’? Instead, what we find is an
attempt by dominant groups to identify their own viewpoints and package
these as ‘everyone’s’ universal point of view. Those who do not correspond
to this viewpoint, such as children, are perceived as liabilities or ‘inferior’
beings. Rather than abstracting personal characteristics and compelling
everyone to judge and be judged according to this account, feminist philoso-
phers such as Iris Marion Young (1990) embrace differences and see differ-
ences not as some obstacle to social justice but a means of assisting it. The
argument goes that the more one can present traditionally deprecated attrib-
utes of a social group as being valuable and important then surely the social
standing of the group will improve.
However, this may not be the case. Martha Minnow (1990) has argued
that the dilemma of difference is deep rooted and membership of a group
labelled negatively is often unavoidably going to be characterized in

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disapproving terms. Thus differences are often defined as deviant rather than
just ‘different’. It has been clearly demonstrated by Thorne (1987) that chil-
dren are defined only in terms of their deviance from adulthood. In fact,
children are defined with the exact opposite characteristics that dominant
groups value in themselves. From the 13th century, it is widely held that
indulging, exempting, shielding or placing them in specially protective care
is more for their benefit than giving them access to equal treatment. Perhaps
asking the question why some people require special protection sheds light
on the contrast between equal and disparate treatment. Charles Taylor’s
(1992) essay on Multiculturalism and the Politics of Recognition has argued
for principles of equality around a ‘universal human potential, a capacity
that all humans share’ (Taylor, 1992: 41). However, does this mean that chil-
dren’s human potential is something recognized now, today? Or is a child’s
moral worth something that lies in the future? There are a plethora of studies
associated with the ‘new sociology of childhood’ that demonstrate how chil-
dren are defined in morally essential criteria that are grossly devalued (see
Mayall, 2002).
Thus the carer–cared for dyadic relationship is always located within
specific social and historical contexts. Some writers on the ethics of care,
such as Tronto (1993), advocate a politics that is sensitive to needs. Within
these contexts, there are historical constructions of those ‘deserving’ care
and those not deserving (Fraser and Gordon, 1994). These are, of course,
constructions of care-givers not care-receivers. The disadvantaged are
regarded as essentially defective and this is reinforced by practice over time.
By emphasizing the care perspective, the works of Gilligan, Tronto
and Held draw our attention clearly to some of the deficiencies of the rights
discourse. The care perspective also provides a more foundational basis on
which to consider issues of rights and justice. However, writers, such as
Tronto (1993), who advocate a politics sensitive to needs from the perspec-
tive of care-givers lead to the care-receivers being defined solely as depen-
dent. Martin Woodhead (1990, 1997) identified distinct dangers of framing
children’s ‘rights’ within a needs-based framework. His objections are based
around the fact that it is families, experts and service providers who define
power relationships around what ‘needs’ are appropriate, with very little
room for children to define their own context. Second, taken-for-granted
statements about the ‘needs of children’ do not necessarily correspond to
other historical and cultural constructions of ‘need’. Thus, identifying chil-
dren’s needs through a feminist ethic of care that identifies children as recip-
ients of care can fall into the danger of being perceived as an inherent part of
children’s nature rather than only a temporary or episodic necessity. Indeed,
with the issue of children as carers studies have shown that children, rather
than suffering ‘false maturity’ and being ‘dysfunctional’ (Frank, 1995), wish
to carry on with some responsibility of caring and see it as an important part
of their family life (Jones et al., 2002; Thomas et al., 2001). This problema-

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tizes the issue of children’s dependence on parents and identifies the com-
plexities in the carer–cared for relationship. However, the feminist ethic of
care taken not just from the perspective of the care-giver but from those,
such as children (or people with disabilities), traditionally defined as care-
receivers enables the complexities around the notion of dependence to be
worked through. As the discussion has so far made plain, those defined with-
in the ‘needs-based discourse’ who have differences, and even needs,6 have
the space within the broad feminist ethic of care to challenge their dependen-
cies within concepts that celebrate difference and diversity.
Dimensions of rights and justice may, however, in some cases provide
what Narayan (1995: 139) refers to as ‘the “enabling conditions” for the pro-
vision of adequate care’. Thus, issues of rights, justice and equality need fur-
ther discussion in the light of insights gained from the feminist ethic of care.

Children, the ethic of care, justice and equality

This section draws out and compares two approaches to ethics and morality
and relates these to the interests of children. On the one hand, the ethics of
equality prioritize social inclusiveness and parity between individuals. This
long tradition in western enlightenment thinking has been criticized by those
who base ethics and morality on the principle of care for not being sensitive
to issues of difference. In particular, feminists, as discussed, have argued that
such a push towards universal inclusiveness marginalizes those who cannot
be homogenized into this dominant ‘inclusiveness’. Thus, feminists have
identified a system of ethics that valorizes values such as caring or trust over
equality. According to this ethical framework, there is recognition of the dif-
fering relational characteristics that need to be included into the ethical out-
line. As different groups have diverse levels of dependence, vulnerability or
special needs, an ethical approach that seeks to assign uniformity over what
is disparate is considered irrelevant or at best marginal.
Virginia Held (1987, 1995) has suggested that a conception of justice,
although of morally good value, is not necessary, as a moderately good life
has continued without it. She gives an example of a family where there is lit-
tle justice but much care. She argues that care is the precondition in familial
relationships based on respect and in this case the concept of justice is at
best marginal. However, there are ample cases of families being unjust and
this leads to a failure of care. For instance, Narayan (1995) gives an extreme
example of female infanticide in India, that is initiated to promote the care of
male children. With the absence of justice in such families female children,
in comparison to their male counterparts, are not able to grow up and
become adult bearers of rights. On the other hand, Claudia Card (1990) sug-
gests that the care ethic may also valorize relationships in which carers
themselves can be seriously abused by those being cared for and by other
family members who are not caring or being cared for.
Marilyn Friedman has noted, even ‘in a close relationship among

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persons of comparable moral personhood, care may degenerate into the

injustices of exploitation, or oppression’ (Friedman, 1987: 96). The trust
given in morally dependent relationships may not be as durable as contracts.
Dependence must not be an acceptable basis of morality. Therefore, with the
case of children who are only occasionally placed within relationships of
comparable moral personhood, the perspective of equality and justice
becomes important. With some conceptions of the ethic of care, the natural
affection felt by parents to the young or vice versa is the foundation of
morality. Equal or impartial criteria for moral judgement are rejected as
depersonalizing, leaving ‘situationally contingent’ criteria such as reciproci-
ty, solidarity and trust. Yet disengaging equal or impartial criteria will depre-
cate many arguments of those being cared for about their relationships with
carers. The ability to draw parallels and make comparisons with other rela-
tionships is extremely important in disputes between the carers and cared
for. Children, or children’s advocates, must be able to make references to
abstract principles (despite the philosophical question marks around this) if
these will lead to an improvement in their situation or rebalance relation-
ships with their carers. Indeed, it is precisely such appeals to often abstract
principles of rules and rights (e.g. the UN Convention on the Rights of the
Child, criteria of Non-Accidental Injury, the 1989 Children Act in the UK,
etc.) that have been used in a realistic way to further children’s interests.
People defined as essentially defective find it difficult to challenge
labels given to them by others, including their care-givers. Thus children can
become aware that they are disadvantaged only if they are able to make
evaluative judgements based on the practices occurring ‘out there’ in the
wider world beyond the dyadic caring relationship. Rule-based approaches
are helpful to find elements of cross-situational identity (Curtin, 1991).

Conclusions
In conclusion, then, the feminist ethic of care has certainly introduced an
important element to understanding the world of children and their position
in society. Attention to the care dimension can identify specific issues for
children’s needs and suffering that could provide ‘the “enabling conditions”
for more adequate forms of justice’ (Narayan, 1995: 139). The rule-based
ethics still proceed to find elements of cross-situational identity important
for the promotion of children’s interests as a social group. As Rita Manning
(1991: 45) has argued, within the ethic of caring rules and rights still have a
place by providing some form of ‘moral minimum’ for assessing interper-
sonal behaviour and policy. Susan Mendus (1995) has also argued that the
hybridity of care and rights is possible, if the starting point of any political
philosophy begins from the political world. Feminist reinterpretations of the
ethic of care have disputed the dichotomy between conceptions of justice
and care (Moller Okin, 1989) and the false split of reason and emotion

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(Michaels, 1986). Generally, most proponents of the feminist ethic of care

today would suggest that there is room for care and justice, a view that I
would give a cautious concurrence with in the context of children.
This recourse to rule-based approaches appears inconsistent with a the-
ory on the ethic of care. However, any approach needs to be capable of com-
promise in the cause of reform and the rule-based agenda must be used
strategically in context-specific ways. The context-specific strategy of utiliz-
ing say the UN Convention to set the agenda of challenging common
assumptions about children’s claims to ‘rights’ has born some fruits.
However, as Spivak (1993) has observed about utilizing essentialist dis-
courses strategically, ‘a strategy suits a situation; a strategy is not a theory’
(Spivak, 1993: 4). Strategic use of right-based discourses is thus effective as
a context-specific strategy, but it cannot provide a long-term political solu-
tion to end oppression. I think the feminist engagements and critiques have
shattered the arrogance of the modernist notion of abstract and universal
rights. As was discussed in the first section of this article, the principles of
universalism and disembodied rights have been seriously checked by femi-
nist emphases upon issues pertaining to contextuality, relationality and expe-
rience.
Onora O’Neill (1988) has argued that the rights discourse is stamped
with a reifying language, which suggests that the holder of rights has some-
thing to possess, rather like property rights. If this possession of rights forms
that starting point for normative reasoning, the correlation between rights
and obligations is ignored and the rights discourse is something whereby
individuals lay claim to things from which they feel they have been exclud-
ed. This gives rise to feelings that people only deal with each other where
there is a compulsion to do so by legalistic rights and duties. Additionally,
O’Neill suggests that rather than a focus on children’s ‘rights’ to their
‘needs’, it is perhaps better to focus on parents’ or care-givers’ obligations to
care – a useful thought worthy of further attention. The problems associated
with legalistic conceptions of rights lead to problems for children who are
often caught up in these disputes, as noted by Smart et al. (2001), who uti-
lize the feminist ethic of care in their empirical work on the experiences of
children after the divorce of their parents. They identify the ways in which
children become both caught up in these adversarial dilemmas, but also by
utilizing the feminist ethic of care they demonstrate how children are not
passive recipients of this adversarial treatment. Jasminka Udovicki provides
a useful warning about going along the justice, equality and rights route and
dispensing with the ethic of care:
The appeals to justice may win back some of the person’s threatened rights. Yet
where mutual commitment and solidarity are lacking, the determination to real-
ize justice itself is hampered, the moral ecology of the relationship is disturbed,
and the motivation to protect one’s own turf takes precedence. One is con-
demned to breathless monitoring of the acts of the other to prevent oneself from

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being shortchanged. Even this is better, I will agree, than being shortchanged,
and it may have to suffice under the conditions of lost, or never achieved, mutu-
ality. But such conditions, however frequent, should not be taken to represent
all conditions and should not define the moral approach to conflicts in close
associations in general. (Udovicki, 1993: 56)

Crucially, the feminist ethic of care dispenses with the unhelpful

autonomy characterized by universal liberal discourses and places the role of
relationships at the heart of social, political and philosophical theory. As
Gilligan has commented:
A feminist ethic of care begins with connection, theorized as primary and seen
as fundamental in human life. People live in connection with one another;
human lives are interwoven in a myriad of subtle and not so subtle ways. . . .
From this standpoint, the conception of a separate self appears intrinsically
problematic, conjuring up the image of rational man, acting out a relationship
with the inner and outer world. Such autonomy, rather than being the bedrock
for solving psychological and moral problems itself becomes the problem, sig-
nifying a disconnection from emotions and a blindness to relationships which
set the stage for psychological and political trouble. (Gilligan, 1998: 342)

Notes
1. The construction of those with ‘needs’ are framed in discursive ways by those who are
powerful enough to offer solutions. Classically these include identification of those ‘deserving’
and ‘undeserving’ care or welfare that has characterized 20th-century welfare (Fraser and
Gordon, 1994).
2. Rawls mentions children twice in A Theory of Justice, once where he asks whether
children are bound by the social contract. He argues they are not; it is the ‘head of the house-
hold’ who is responsible for them. Second, he sees children in the context of transference of
goods and morality between generations. Having children is an important motive for gaining
possessions and income. The family is the place where children develop a ‘feeling for love’.
Feminist critics have questioned whether it is morally justified to see children as objects to
which people can claim rights (English, 1977; Kearns, 1983).
3. It needs acknowledging that feminist thought has a long and complex history. In many
struggles, such as those for equal legal, educational and employment rights, feminists have
emphasized the values of autonomy (see Bryson, 1999).
4. For instance Marshall, of enormous influence in the development of welfare citizenship
in the UK post-1945, refers to children as citizens in potentia rather than as active agents for
citizenship and rights in the here and now (Marshall, 1950).
5. For extended discussion of the intersections of race, class and gender in constructions
of care, see Nakano Glenn (2002)
6. Woodhead notes that despite the need for caution over needs-based discourse, children
still need love, understanding.

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