Includes bibliographical references (pages 220-230) and index.

Elusive Equality -- Feminist Critiques of Equality -- Should Women Still Want Equality? -- Love's Labor: The Requirements of Dependency -- Relationships of Dependency and Equality -- Reflections on Being a Mother's Child -- Dependency in the Human Condition -- Vulnerability and the Moral Nature of Dependency Relations -- The Transparent Self of the Dependency Worker -- Moral Obligations of Dependency Workers and an Ethics of Care -- Moral Obligations to the Dependency Worker -- Political Liberalism and Human Dependency -- Dependency as a Criterion of Adequacy -- The Role of Equality and Equality's Presuppositions -- The Arguments in Outline -- The Presuppositions of Equality -- The Circumstances of Justice for a Well-Ordered Society -- The Idealization That "All Citizens Are Fully Cooperating Members of Society" -- Free Persons Are "Self-Originating Sources of Valid Claims" -- The Benefits and Burdens of Social Cooperation -- The Two Powers of a Moral Person and the Index of Primary Goods -- The Public Conception of Social Cooperation -- Conclusion: The Principles of Justice and Dependency Concerns -- Some Mother's Child -- Policy and a Public Ethic of Care -- Welfare De-Form -- Justifications of Welfare -- The Family and Medical Leave Act -- Welfare Re-Formed: A Vision of Welfare Based on Doulia -- "Not My Way, Sesha. Your Way. Slowly." A Personal Narrative -- A Child Is Born -- Portrait of Sesha at Twenty-Seven -- On the Very Possibility of Mothering and the Challenge of the Severely Disabled Child.

This fascinating study of women carers explores the significance of dependency work by analysing John Rawls' influential liberal theory and two examples of public policy - welfare reform and family leave - to show how both theory and policy fail women.