Asking for help and offering connection

Abstract

The complexity of asking for help and giving and receiving it at a time of life when independence is prized above everything is explored. Requests for and offers of help and connection intersect with flows of power where control can masquerade as care. Such masquerades carry the marks of patriarchal control, class-based symbolic violence as well as of individual personalities and life stories. The small acts and everyday connections presented in this chapter are often ingenious and creative forms of mutual support and friendship, subtly undermining expectations about status and control.