Bunting pays particular attention to the profession of nursing where many of her concerns are brought into stark relief. Rising rates of female labour market participation increase the need for non-household forms of care, but in an era of austerity this is a recipe for crisis. Women were conspicuously absent from 18 th century economic thought, their care duties relegated to the private domain, considered a natural aptitude rather than a valuable form of labour that sustained the market. Used to the NHS, I found the process of browsing for a healthcare provider as if it was car insurance unsettling when I first moved here. We use cookies on this site to understand how you use our content, and to give you the best browsing experience.

It explains why there are massive staff shortages, and the suicide rate of care workers is now twice the national average. Labours of Love is an attempt to give voice to those working in the vastly undervalued and underfunded sector that is care work. Though they are frequently worn out from the Sisyphean labour of “rolling back anguish”, the care workers she speaks to remain endlessly curious about their patients or clients, wanting to hear life stories. There are a wide range of other articles including 'Unlocking the Pensions Debate: The Origins and Future of the ‘Triple Lock’ by Jonathan Portes and 'The Politics of England: National Identities and Political Englishness' by John Denham and Lawrence Mckay.Despite the advance of marketisation, Bunting notes, swathes of the care economy remain hidden and its currency of time, attention, empathy, respect, tact, trust, dignity, discretion, reciprocity and solidarity is undervalued. Care is a set of activities which, like music, poetry and art, makes us human: it reflects our capacity for tenderness and generosity, to reach beyond our own self-interest to serve the flourishing of another.

This is the spirit that corporations exploit, leaving carers routinely battling poverty and exhausted by overwork. The author of 'The Queen of Whale Key' and 'The Suspicions of Mr Whicher' has found a new subject with which to amaze us: the case of the 'Croydon Poltergeist' and its investigation by the N. She shows that care is ubiquitous and largely invisible, and she raises vital questions about the place and value of care in British society.

Within the current climate the book provides an answer to those questioning how we reached this point and what political and cultural shifts are required to repair our starved care systems. Convenience” and “availability” become the mantras; GP surgeries, open seven days a week, are now a “service industry”.

We first experience bodily care as infants, Bunting notes, and many of the questions that run through her book originated in her early days of motherhood. However I was particularly struck with the experiences of carers - both professional carers and people who've cared for loved ones - and the rewards they find in it.It is an unusual combination of memoir, investigative journalism, philosophy and a little literary criticism but a deeply wise and satisfying synthesis. Smith’s abstracted homo economicus worked to invisibilize women and advocate for an ethics of care devoid of interdependency. It leads to her extraordinary caricature: ‘feminism has forged ahead on many fronts … but a recognition and valuing of care is noticeably absent’. This book gives you an insight into just how grim the situation is on the frontline of caring roles in the UK - although reading it I suspected that no matter how bad I think it is, the reality is probably worse. In one chapter, Bunting arrives at the offices of a voluntary-sector organization which supports families with a disabled child.