The Emotional Work of Care:

1. The Emotional Work of Care: Inequalities in Capitals and Mothers’ Emotional Labour in Education

2. Concerns of this Paper • To focus on the significance of caring in the educational field- particularly, to highlight the nature of mothers’ involvement in children’s education as a form of gendered moral care work and to bring it from private consideration into public debate • To describe the educational care work done by mothers at school transfer relative to different social positionings, and to discuss the tensions between the idiosyncratic nature of this care and the normalised expectations of care institutionalised within the educational system • To explain the relationship between the gender inequality associated with the allocation of this care to mothers, and the inequalities between mothers relative to their capacities to access and activate sets of resources or capitals

3. Theoretical Framework- Emotional Care Work and Inequalities • Interdisciplinary discourse used to problematise the concept of care and how it applies in the educational field. Lynch (1989) on love labour as a form of uncommodifiablecare work. Caring for and about (Ungerson 1990), emotional work and intimate relationships (Duncombe and Marsden 1993, 1996, 1998), Hochschild (1983, 1989) on emotional management and gendered relations. • Feminist moral philosophers on care and its centrality to moral dispositions and behaviour - (Nussbaum 1995 2001, Bubeck, 1995, Sevenhuijsen 1998)

4. Mothers’ Care and the Educational Field • A reductionist and gender biased discourse of parental involvement (David et al. 1993, Reay 1998, 2000) Feminist sociological interest in ‘school choice’ at transfer (David et al. 1994, Reay and Lucey 2000, Reay 2000, O’Brien 2001) • Mothering/caring work in education generally (Lareau 1989, Smith 1996, Walkerdine and Lucey 1989, Plummer 2000, Skeggs 1998, Smith 2005). • This paper draws on Bourdieu’s thesis of capitals in the context of the production and (re)production of care, and Allatt’s expansion of the idea of ‘emotional capital’ as educational advantage.

5. Context for this Research-Mothers’ Emotional Care Work at School Transfer (O’Brien 2005) • Based on a PhD study examining care work of twenty five mothers at school transfer, chosen by theoretical sampling- social class, marital status, ethnicity, engagement in paid work, sexual orientation and recently migrated. • Study sought to explore the nature of emotional care work, its problematics and tensions relative to various positionings, and to understand the meaning this work held for mothers.

6. Mothers in Sample by Category(marr=married, co-hab=cohabiting, sep=separated, al single=always single)

7. Capitals and the Production of Care in Education • Key Findings- The significant issue of resources and capitals available to do this gendered care work • -care is not naturally or magically produced, it is shaped and indeed constrained by economic, cultural, social and emotional capitals in the educational field. As Bourdieu has suggested these are interrelated resources. • Emotional capital is understood as those internal emotional resources and/or emotional supports accessed through personal emotional support of an intimate or friend. A capital produced through emotional connection and emotional recognition. (and not necessarily through heterosexual marriage!) Limitless care and/or lack of other resources depletes emotional capital daily and well-being.

8. Figure 1 The Moral Encoding of Mothers’ Emotional Work A The Cognitive Order : Gender Ideologies B Understandings of Emotional Work : Mothers’ Narratives of love, ambivalence, inalienability of care, essentialist and feminist positions E 2 E 1 School Work: Researching, Phoning, Deciding, Meeting Teachers, Organising, Homework, Listening, Exam Support, Transporting, Extra Curricular General Emotional Work: Listening, Feeding, Supporting, Thinking, Talking, Worrying, Transporting, Managing The Moral Order : The Moral Imperative to Care. C Mothers’ Habitus : Social Practices and Dispositions Relative to Positionings Social Positionings : Class, Race, Ethnicity, Sexual Orientation, Paid Work D Capacity to Access and Activate Capitals The Resources Order : Forms of Capital Economic Capital Cultural Capital Social Capital Emotional Capital F FAMILY CONTEXT SCHOOL CONTEXT TIME

9. The Resources Order and Care:Categorising Capitals (Bourdieu 1984 and Allatt 1993) • Economic capital-assigned a value 1-4, income rated v. low to high based on < 29,000, low 29,000-I+25%, adequate I x 2, > high I x 2. • Credentialised cultural capital 1-4- Educational qualifications on continuum v. low to high based on v low, primay level, low junior cert., adequate leaving cert. and high college degree. • Social Capital-social groups, neighbours and friends that can give social advantage • Emotional capital 1-4: Intimate emotional supports available to mother

10. Name Economic Capital Cultural Capital Social Capital Emotional Capital Masha 1 3 1 1 Ellie 1 3 1 1 Brigid 1 1 1 2 Maisie 1 1 1 2 Kay 2 1 2 3 Nuala 2 2 2 2 Doreen 1 2 2 2 Linda 3 4 3 2 Kate 3 4 2 2 Ruth 3 4 3 3 Sarah 4 3 3 2 Janet 3 4 2 3 Anna 3 4 4 4 Rita 2 4 3 3 Pauline 1 1 1 1 Val 1 1 1 2 Trudi 3 4 3 3 Rose 2 2 2 2 Laura 2 1 2 2 Donna 3 3 3 3 Marie 4 4 4 3 Maura 4 3 3 3 Connie 3 3 3 2 Noreen 4 4 4 3 Nell 3 3 3 3

11. Patterns of Economic and Cultural Capital

12. Relationships between Capitals

13. Accessing and Activating Capitals • Resources are not automatically translated into a product-care (Lareau et al. 1999, Reay 2000) ! It takes effort, time and energy to activate these capitals to benefit the child. • Idiosyncrasy- Mothers’ positioning and habitus-Anna whose sexual orientation meant difficulties activating cultural capital in the educational field Problems of paid work Time away from care in paid work may increase mothers emotional capital and capacity to care • Marginality Masha from Dubai and Ellie found it not posssible to access the full potential of this capital from their marginal positionings and relative to the lack of economic and emotional resources they experienced at this time in Ireland.

14. Specifics of Capitals and School Transfer • Economic Capital-is required for school fees, subscriptions, uniforms, books and equipment, extracurricular activities, transport and hidden day to day schooling costs -no money no choice: I wouldn’t have the money for the other school either because their books are too expensive, here you can rent….. -having money means choices But…Having choices can mean more emotional work (Ruth), • Cultural capital-seems to be the capital par excellence in discerning and supporting academic work-example of Traveller women. But moral care sometimes requires mothers to use cultural capital in unexpected resistances to schooling for the child’s happiness (Anna) or because of wider familial demands (Janet, Marie) • Social capital- ‘pressing those buttons’ to gain access to schools, various forms of social capital in context. Being a teacher, an insider. Ellie talks of her lack of social capital.

15. Emotional Capital and how is it accessed and used in care? • A gendered capital: Our emotional energy and skills to care for ourselves, and those we are in relationship with. Resilience, positivity, connectedness, empathy used through time and to make time to care. • Interrelated with other capitals-but could have money, friends and education and still feel low-illness, depression, bereavement, unemployment, separation. Running on empty! But not quite and not allowed to not care (or children may be taken into care-Brigid’s experience as a Traveller). • Emotional capital maintains the circle of care (Bubeck 1995)-being tied to the inalienable work of care even when they lack this basic resource-creates frustration, guilt and feelings of inadequacy. Facilitates one’s sense of identity as a moral person “finding the crock of gold”. Emotional capital links one to the imperative to care!

16. Figure 1 Spatial Metaphor: Mapping Mothers’ Access to Capitals

17. Figure 2 Spatial Metaphor Contrasting Capitals for Pauline (Working Class) and Anna (Middle Class)

18. Conclusions? -Tackling Inequalities in Emotional Care • Is justice then a question of redistribution of capitals? Partly, yes, in that inequalities between women make it difficult to care and impact on their well-being and their families..time, money… • How or can emotional capital be redistributed? Mothers’ emotional capital can be increased through less stress of absence of other capitals. The question is how to increase caring connections and that is more a political problem and of making care central to life in all contexts (Fraser 2000, Hochchild 1995).

19. Tackling Care Inequalities contd. • Is redistribution of capitals sufficient for equality in care? No, because activating capitals to do care work is subject to positionings, and inequalities of recognition, and to idiosyncrasies that arise from these. Moreover, issues of respect and power are fundamental -tackling patriarchal familial relations but how? • Tackling care inequalities must also be about gender ideology and inequality as they have been institutionalised, as the resources order and moral and gendered orders are linked. • Instances of ambivalence in women’s narratives showed that being tied to intensive care even when one has the resources to carry out the work means one’s development and well-being as a woman are curtailed. So build up men’s emotional capital?