Household work is an essential part of many people's lives, yet all too often it is rendered invisible. More Than It Seems aims not only to make this vitally important work visible, but also to reconsider it as a source of learning.
Drawing on a large study conducted in Canada, the authors consider diverse forms of household work, including carework. They highlight the experiences of people at the margins — including immigrants, Aboriginal women, people with disabilities, nannies, and people who provide and receive care — and analyze those experiences through the prism of lifelong learning theory. The result is a pioneering work that challenges our assumptions about both household work and lifelong learning.
Foreword - Patricia Gouthro
Introduction: More Than It Seems: Household Work and Lifelong Learning - Patrizia Albanese
Chapter 1: What Is Housework? - Margrit Eichler
Chapter 2: Learning through Household Work - Margrit Eichler with Ann Matthews
Portrait: Dorica
Chapter 3: Encounters with the Self: Disability and the Many Dimensions of Self-Care - Ann Matthews
Portrait: Fang
Chapter 4: ""Have You Had Your Meal Yet?"": Chinese Immigrants, Food-related Household Work and Informal Learning - Lichun Willa Liu
Portrait: Mithreal
Chapter 5: Choreographing Care: Learning through Unpaid Carework - Susan Ferguson and Margrit Eichler
Portrait: Dee
Chapter 6: The Case of Nannies: Shifting Unpaid Work onto Paid Work - Nicky Hyndman
Conclusions - Patrizia Albanese
Appendix 1: Methodological Overview - Ann Matthews
Appendix 2: The WALL Project - D.W. Livingston
Appendix 3: Mothers Are Women (MAW) - Kathryn Spracklin
Margrit Eichler is Professor in the Department of Sociology and Equity Studies in Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.
Patrizia Albanese is Associate Professor of Sociology at Ryerson University.
Susan Ferguson, Nicky Hyndman, Lichun Willa Liu, and Ann Matthews are graduate students at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.
“This book shows that household work is undervalued and that the expertise needed to do it is unappreciated. It documents the wide range of skills and knowledge required to do household work and discusses how women and men actually learn to do all the myriad tasks involved in maintaining households and caring for the people who live in them.” — Meg Luxton, Professor of Social Science and Women’s Studies, York University