Worlds of care: The emotional lives of fathers caring for children with disabilities

Abstract

Is contemporary masculinity too fragile to handle the weight of care, dependence, and disability? Aaron Jackson’s Worlds of Care explores the ways that men in the United States face the economic, emotional, and relational challenges when their children with developmental disabilities require intensive care. How does this kind of parenting affect these men’s understanding of their responsibilities, their life-course, and their gendered identity? The book demonstrates the social conditions that create the challenges in the first place – such as an arduous form of capitalism and trajectories of masculinity that scar men’s engagement with care. And it shows us also what it is like for men to live in and through these conditions in the pursuit of a good life for themselves and their children. In the context of a literature that focuses on the relationship between care and the social conditions of women, the result is a rare and insightful look into the relationship between masculinity, dependence, and disability.