Enough is Enough: A Feminist Case Study and Analysis of Self-Care for Caregivers in a Non-Ideal World

Abstract Care work can be extremely demanding, as this musing illustrates with an extended feminist case study of long and grinding care work. Yet it is essential work that is paradoxically both undervalued and fundamental to the continuation of society. Much ink has been spilled on what society and the state owe to those who render care. Here, I interrogate the limits of the care worker’s duty to provide care under a system that is oppressive to care workers because it does not provide what is owed, and relies on a logic of depletion. Self-care can justify saying “no” to care work as a way of resisting the logic of depletion, but in a non-ideal world, this refusal isn’t open to everyone. And who it is open to distressingly tracks and levies both socio-economic oppression and the very same system that devalues care work in the first place.