Circles of Care: Work and Identity in Women's Lives (SUNY series on Women and Work) - Paperback

This work examines the experience of women providing care to children, disabled persons, the chronically ill, and the frail elderly. It differs from most writing about caregiving because it focuses on the providers rather than the care recipients. It looks at the experience of women caregivers in specific settings, exploring what caregiving actually entails and what it means in their lives.

"What impresses me the most is the careful and nuanced understanding of caring -- the valuing of women's traditional work of nurturing, along with an acute awareness of how this can be exploited and over-emphasized. I like the combination of close focus that the many interview studies provide with a more global perspective about institutional constraints and resources that influence caring." -- Barbara Melosh

"The combination of feminist analysis with focus on both intimate and professional caregivers makes this an extremely important contribution to the literature." -- Barbara Hillyer