The Contradictory Emotions of Gendered Labor

This article examines family care for sick older people in a rural hospital in Guangdong Province. Drawing on six months of fieldwork, I show how local families divide the duty of care for the elderly, and how care is perceived in local discourse. Specific attention is paid to competing notions of care and how their meanings are negotiated: neighbors and even family members often show themselves to be indifferent to elder care, and care work is feminized and devalued. At the same time, family members and daughters in particular have to shoulder duties of care. The contradictory emotions of gendered care work offer a vantage point to understand the changing dynamics of patriarchy, marketization, and state paternalism in China today.