Emily K. Abel is Acting Associate Professor at the School of Public Health at the University of California, Los Angeles. Margaret K. Nelson is in the Department of Sociology at Middlebury College.

"What impresses me the most is the careful and nuanced understanding of caring — the valuing of women's traditional work of nurturing, along with an acute awareness of how this can be exploited and over-emphasized. I like the combination of close focus that the many interview studies provide with a more global perspective about institutional constraints and resources that influence caring." — Barbara Melosh."The combination of feminist analysis with focus on both intimate and professional caregivers makes this an extremely important contribution to the literature." — Barbara Hillyer

• Acknowledgments Part I: Theoretical Issues Preface 1: Circles of Care: An Introductory EssayEmily K. Abel and Margaret K. Nelson 2: Toward a Feminist Theory of CaringBerenice Fisher and Joan Tronto Part II: The Domestic Domain Preface 3: Family Care of the Frail ElderlyEmily K. Abel 4: Gender Differences in Spouse Management of the Caregiver RoleBaila Miller Part III: Formal Organizations Preface 5: Alice in the Human Services: A Feminist Analysis of Women in the Caring ProfessionsBerenice Fisher 6: The Duty or Right to Care? Nursing and Womanhood in Historical PerspectiveSusan M. Reverby 7: Caring for the Institutionalized Mentally Retarded: Work Culture and Work-Based Social SupportRebecka Inga Lundgren and Carole H. Browner 8: Nursing Homes As TroubleTimothy Diamond 9: Does It Pay to Care?Karen Brodkin Sacks Part IV: Unaffiliated Providers Preface 10: Mothering Others' Children: The Experiences of Family Day Care ProvidersMargaret K. Nelson 11: Experts and Caregivers: Perspectives on Underground Day CareElaine Enarson 12: Licensed Lay Midwifery and Medical Models of ChildbirthRose Weitz and Deborah A. Sullivan Part V: Overlapping Responsibilities Preface 13: Double Jeopardy: The Costs of Caring at Work and at HomeNancy L. Marshall, Rosalind C. Barnett, Grace K. Baruch, and Joseph H. Pleck 14: Family Perceptions of Care in a Nursing HomeBarbara Bowers 15: Children's Caregivers and Ideologies of Parental InadequacyJulia Wrigley Contributors Index