Worlds of Care: The Emotional Lives of Fathers Caring for Children with Disabilities

Front Cover
Univ of California Press, Apr 6, 2021 - Social Science - 216 pages

The stories of fathers caring for non-verbal children and how these experiences alter their understandings of care, masculinity, and living a full life.

Vulnerable narratives of fatherhood are few and far between; rarer still is an ethnography that delves into the practical and emotional realities of intensive caregiving. Grounded in the intimate everyday lives of men caring for children with major physical and intellectual disabilities, Worlds of Care undertakes an exploration of how men shape their identities in the context of caregiving. Anthropologist Aaron J. Jackson fuses ethnographic research and creative nonfiction to offer an evocative account of what is required for men to create habitable worlds and find some kind of “normal” when their circumstances are anything but. Combining stories from his fieldwork in North America with reflections on his own experience caring for his severely disabled son, Jackson argues that care has the potential to transform our understanding of who we are and how we relate to others.

 

Contents

Past Becomings and Habitable
24
Interlude Garys Arrival Story
51
Interlude Connectivities
113
Notes
177
References
187
Index
195
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

About the author (2021)

Aaron J. Jackson is an anthropologist living and working in Melbourne. His research focuses on fatherhood, care, and disability.

Bibliographic information