Care as a Public Value: Linking Responsibility, Resources, and Republicanism

This Article argues that care is a public value and that facilitating it is a component of government's responsibility to foster persons' capacities for self-government. Ample foundation for recognizing this value may be found in feminism and liberalism; this Article also suggests that important civic republican ideals, such as the political economy of citizenship, might be reconstructed to support it. "Welfare reform, phase two," with its rhetoric of supporting "working families," offers an opportunity to think creatively about institutional arrangements that would move the United States closer to a new caregiving order and to address the human costs of the current care crisis and gendered care economy. This Article also considers the potential of promoting "responsible fatherhood" to help move toward a new caregiving order.