Becoming an Expert Caregiver

Auteur

CARA A. CHIARALUCE is a senior lecturer in the Department of Sociology at Santa Clara University. She conducts research in the fields of carework, gender and family, health, and disability.

Texte du rabat

This book features the voices of 50 primary caregivers of autistic and neurodivergent children who illuminate the process through which lay women become expert caregivers to provide the best care for their children. Expert caregiving captures an intensification of traditional family carework – meeting dependents’ financial, emotional, and physical needs – that transcends the walls of one’s private home and family and challenges the strict boundaries between many worlds: lay and professional, family and work, private and public, medical and social, and individual and society.

Contenu

Introduction

1. Autism Complexities: Competing Paradigms and Historical Context
2. Tracing Transformation: The Birth of the Expert Caregiver
3. Making Sense of Difference: Building the Expert Caregiver Toolkit
4. Transcending the Private Sphere: Extending Carework into the Community
5. Potentials and Limits of Expert Caregiving: Community Carework and Medicalization
6. “I Need Some Air Down Here and Nobody Is Noticing”: Caring about the Expert Caregiver Appendix A: Methodology and Caregiver Demographics
   Appendix B: Interview Schedule
   Acknowledgments
   References
   Index