In the previous chapter we explored care and its generic realisation in a variety of social relations. Although care can be viewed through the lens of moral philosophy – as a moral duty that is realised through a set of practices embodying distinct virtues – care itself, we argued, can only ever be socially realised within particular forms of relationship. Questions such as who should receive and who should provide care, how and where care should be delivered, and what care means to those who are carers and to those who are cared for will elicit different answers at different times and in different places. Granted this variability in its social forms and relations, it is still the case that an imperative to care remains. There are no societies without care and no care without social proximity – within and between households. Care by those with whom a person lives seems to be a universal reference point for all subsequent social relations of care, whatever form they take and however they are realised. At its simplest, mothers care for their babies, parents care for their children and, when older, their children will care for their partners and eventually for their parents, too.

Within most contemporary care relationships, a central distinction can be made between care given and received by members of a household and care that is provided by others not otherwise related to the person being cared for. This distinction is commonly framed as that between formal/paid and informal/unpaid care. However, it is important to remember that family care seems to still provide the template for other forms of care work, rendering both formal and informal care as forms of reproductive labour. Services provided to families by others can, however, be considered through an alternative or complementary template, representing the social relations of paid care work reflected in the idea of contract and the ‘professionalisation’ of care (Meagher, 2006). From such a perspective, care services form a distinct part of the market economy, separate from, if not unconnected to, the life-world of family and home. It is this expanding domain of formal care services and the contradictory ways it can be understood that the present chapter addresses.