Paper short abstract:

Drawing on my fieldwork on family-based childcare and eldercare in Germany, I will show how family attitudes towards care work stabilize contemporary capitalism and self-correct the potential friction its most vulnerable subjects might generate; constituting a conservative force for capitalism.

Paper long abstract:

The reproduction of capitalist society has always relied on the activation of workers to support nonworkers, among them children and the elderly. This has been accomplished through public (pre)schools and institutionalized eldercare; though the commodification of care work, employing primarily low-cost, feminized, migrant labor; and through the conscription of the family to care for its nonworking members. Melinda Cooper (2017) has shown, for the US, how the importance of the family and of family values has grown to compensate for the withdrawal of public support. At first glance, Germany offers a counterexample. Identified in comparative studies (Reher 1998) for its “weak” families in terms of family allegiance and authority over the individual, Germany’s family policies of recent decades have further socialized some of the care burden that mothers and daughters carried. Still, even in Germany today, family remains the final arbiter of care for the young and the elderly; just as this care is commonly considered what the family is for. Drawing on my fieldwork on family-based childcare and eldercare in Germany, I will show how family sentiments and practices regarding care work stabilize contemporary capitalism and self-correct the potential friction that its most vulnerable subjects might otherwise generate. I will examine, thereby, the extent to which even the “weak” family, which prioritizes individual autonomy, constitutes a conservative force for capitalism.