Part-time for all : a care manifesto

"Part Time for All offers solutions to 4 pressing problems: inequality for care-givers; family stress from demands of work and care; chronic time scarcity; policy makers who are ignorant of care and care-givers with little access to policy making--the care/policy divide. Only a radical restructuring of both work and care can redress all these problems. We propose new norms: no one does paid work for more than 30 hours a week, and everyone contributes roughly 22 hours of unpaid care to family, friends, or their chosen community of care. Other approaches provide only partial solutions. For example, wages for housework, or excellent daycare, or flexible work hours would not overcome the care/policy divide. We explain why everyone needs to acquire the knowledge and dispositions that come from the sustained experience of providing care throughout one's life. We show how work can be transformed to allow time for care giving, and how these new norms will generate a cultural shift in the value accorded care. While we focus primarily on human-to-human care, we include care for the earth. The final two chapters describe how these processes of transformation could be feasibly accomplished and why these changes are possible in high income countries within our current global economy. Every one of our proposals already exists in at least one country; the task is to integrate the key reforms and scale them up. Given the magnitude of the current problems, deep changes are needed. Part-Time for All offers a feasible path forward."