T he question of how to care for someone who is utterly depen- dent—whether that person is a child or a family member who is ill or disabled—arises for most of us at some point in our lives. It is a question that is particularly salient for women because of a common societal expectation that they will take over in such circum- stances. But what if a woman does not want to make that sacrifice? Will she have a choice if she’s not well positioned financially? Love’s Labor challenges a po- litical system that makes those situations threatening for many women and that puts the responsibility more on them than on men. The book also criticizes contemporary philosophical theories of equality and justice for ignoring the unique social position of people who care for dependents. With profound wisdom, clarity, and compassion, Eva Feder Kittay envisions a social world that acknowledges the inevitability of dependency and that truly values what she calls “dependency work.” The book is divided into three parts. The first discusses the nature of depen- dency relations and their moral dimen- sions. The second gives a “dependency critique” of John Rawls’s highly influen- tial theory of justice, amending that the- ory accordingly. The third—the most practical section—argues for the reform of social policies in the United States that determine the conditions of depen- dency work. That section also includes reflections on Kittay’s own experience mothering a child with a severe disabili- ty. I thoroughly enjoyed almost every word. What interested me most, though, were the theoretical sections, where Kittay follows a familiar feminist line of criticism against mainstream the- ories of justice and equality but in a way that is unique and ultimately persuasive. Philosophical theories of justice and equality commonly take as a starting point a conception of human beings as rational and equally empowered individ- uals. They then ground principles of jus- tice or equality in that conception. Kit- tay positions herself, by contrast, among feminist theorists such as Annette Baier and Virginia Held, who “have begun to formulate a moral theory and a politics grounded in the maternal relation, the paradigm of a relation of care” (p. 19). To fully appreciate the demands of jus- tice and equality, it is argued, we need to acknowledge that most human beings are embedded in dependency relations. And that’s something we certainly won’t forget if we begin with the relationship between a mother and her child. However, the move to a maternal paradigm is itself open to criticism. For women philosophers to put mothers at the center of their moral deliberations is, seemingly, to reinforce an essentialist view of women as mothers. And further- more, to focus on a relation in which one party is completely dependent and the other cares naturally (or so we tend to believe) seems to exclude concerns about justice, for it’s not clear how jus- tice matters in a naturally caring rela- tionship. Is Kittay susceptible to such criti- cism? Not if her focus is on “dependen- cy relations” and “dependency workers” rather than on “maternal relations” and “mothers.” And indeed, she’s not com- mitted to discussing only mothers. Fo- cusing on dependency workers is prefer- able because it makes room for men as caregivers, and it emphasizes that those who fill such roles are workers. The car- ing they do is not simply a natural ex- pression of themselves; it is work. And they should not have to perform it, ac- cording to Kittay, in conditions that are demeaning either to them or to their charges. She does not value care to the exclusion of justice; in her framework the two are inseparable. It is interesting how Kittay merges care and justice. For example, unlike most feminists with whom she aligns herself, she shows faith in contractarian theories of justice. Annette Baier has written that “it takes inattention to co- operation between unequals . . . to keep one a contented contractarian.” But in outlining the revisions necessary to make Rawls’s social contract theory more sensitive to dependency concerns, Kittay stakes out a different view. We normally think of equality as an ideal of justice, not care (p. 18). As de- veloped by Kittay, however, equality is “connection-based.” We are equal in terms of properties that we share through our connection with others: the need to care for people close to us and to be cared for in situations of dependency (pp. 26-29, pp. 66-68). To preserve that equality, we must follow what Kittay calls the “principle of doulia” (simple translation: “what goes around comes around”). People who are dependent cannot always reciprocate the care they receive and those who care for them are vulnerable because of how much of their own energy is invested in the well-being of the other person. Reciprocity is indi- rect with a connection-based equality; the wider society that benefits from some people’s caring work is obligated to reciprocate. Kittay’s discussion of the vulnerabili- ty of dependency workers is one place where she might fall prey to the criticism of those who theorize from relations of dependency. She writes that dependency workers need to put the needs of their charge before their own needs (p. 51, p. 91), which seems to advocate a form of caring that many feminists would associ- ate with women’s oppression. Some de- September-October 2000 44 HASTINGS CENTER REPORT Dependency Relations as a Starting Point for Justice by Carolyn McLeod review