In the last chapter we explored the ways in which extended family networks support their members, focusing particularly on circumstances where unemployment is high and resources are scarce. In this chapter we investigate how people care for children, older people and those who are unable to care for themselves, whether temporarily, due to illness, or on a more permanent basis. We also discuss how the connectedness of kin networks varies and how this relates to class and patterns of women's and men's employment.

Much research into the care that takes place within families looks at divisions of labour within nuclear-family households, usually focusing on the gendering of care work and the implications of this in terms of women's and men's participation in the workforce. The authors of the original study focused on how care and other domestic services were shared between kin living in different households. They found an extensive reliance on kin, particularly mothers of daughters, for help with domestic labour and childcare and hypothesised that, with increasing differentiation within kinship networks, the ability to provide such care would diminish. Recent research, however, carried out in what might be seen as the home of individualisation, California, as well as in Britain, shows that women rely on their extended kin networks for help with childcare (Wheelock and Jones, 2002; Gray, 2005; Hansen, 2005). Furthermore, there are class differences in this reliance with women in middle-class, professional families making ‘family needs contingent on work’ while ‘working-class and upper-class women demand that their employment accommodate their care-giving needs’ (Hansen, 2005, 213). This suggests that the value attached to ‘being there’ for your children is related to class, although not in any simple way, and that it is influenced by the value attached to paid work (Duncan et al, 2003). In this context it is significant that women's paid employment, particularly if it is full time, reduces their availability to ‘be there’ for kin and to participate in kinship networks. And if ‘being there’ is highly valued, which it is among our interviewees, then it is likely that women will not be inclined to participate in full-time employment, at least while their children are small or if they have other caring responsibilities. In what follows we explore the care that is exchanged within kinship networks, drawing out its class and gender dimensions and the way it is affected by women's employment.