A History of Regulating Working Families: Strains, Stereotypes, Strategies and Solutions. NICOLE BUSBY AND GRACE JAMES. Oxford: Hart, 2020, 184 pp., £60.00
| Published date | 01 September 2021 |
| Author | ELLEN GORDON‐BOUVIER |
| Date | 01 September 2021 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/jols.12305 |
DOI: ./j ols.
BOOK REVIEW
A History of Regulating Working Families:
Strains, Stereotypes, Strategies and Solutions
NICOLE BUSBY GRACE JAMES
Oxford: Hart, , pp., £.
The task of caring for dependent members of society is often regarded as lying beyond legal and
political concern.Instead, responsibility for care is delegated to the private family unit, where it
is predominantly carried out by its female members.Demonstrating adherence to the classical
liberal values of autonomy and state minimalism, the state also expects the family unit to be eco-
nomically self-sufficient, with dependency on the state being heavily stigmatized.Attempting to
fulfil this dual role produces inevitable tensions and conflicts, as duties in the home impact on an
individual’s ability to undertake paid work. Historically, this was achieved through role special-
ization. The sexes were viewed as occupying ‘separatespheres’, with women primarily tasked with
unpaid caregiving and domestic work in the home.In more recent decades, this has given way
to a discourse of formal legal equality and a call for the state to remove any remaining obstacles
to women’s full participation in the paid workforce.
In this novel and path-breaking book, Nicole Busby and Grace James analyse and chart the
state’s various attempts over the decades, and especially following the Second World War, to rec-
oncile and balance paid work with caregiving duties through legal regulation. In particular, the
authors are concerned with ‘whose interests have been, and continue to be, promotedby the adop-
tion of particular strategies and policies’, as well as ‘whose interests have been, and continue to
be, sidelined or ignored’ (p. ). Throughout the book, the authors employ Fineman’s influen-
tial vulnerability theory as a lens through which their historical analysis takes place.As Fine-
man explains, vulnerability theory involves a rejection of the dominant liberal assumptions of
autonomous self-sufficiency as harmful and unrealistic, arguing instead that the human condi-
tion consists of an inescapable and universal embodied vulnerability, to which the state must
respond.As Busby and James outline in the first chapter, their analysis focuses on three core
See for example R. Harding, Duties to Care: Dementia, Relationality and Law ().
See for example A. Barlow, ‘Configuration(s) of Unpaid Caregiving within Current LegalDiscourse in and around the
Family ’ () Northern Ireland Legal Q. .
M. A. Fineman, The Autonomy Myth ().
J.Fudge, ‘Feminist Reflections on the Scope of Labour Law: Domestic Work,Social Reproduction, and Jurisdiction’ ()
Feminist Legal Studies .
See M. A. Fineman, ‘The Vulnerable Subject: Anchoring Equality in the Human Condition’ () YaleJ. of Law &
Femin ism ; M. A. Fineman, ‘Vulnerability and Inevitable Inequality’ () Oslo Law Rev..
Id. ().
© The Author.Journal of Law and Society © Cardiff University Law School
J. Law Soc. ;:–. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/jols 485
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