Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-7qhmt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-29T08:51:07.178Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Caring for solidarity? The intimate politics of grandmother childcare and neoliberal conservatism in urban Turkey

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 June 2019

Abstract

The number of grandmothers who provide regular care for their grandchildren and do housework for their daughters or daughters-in-law is increasing in Turkey. While perpetuating traditional gender roles for themselves as a surrogate daughter, wife, or daughter-in-law, these women nonetheless enable younger women to distance themselves from obligatory care work at home. The sociocultural concepts of kinship ties, economic need, or love for grandchildren do not fully explain why grandmothers assume the role of caregiver for their grandchildren. Drawing on interviews with 25 grandmothers from middle-class families in urban Turkey, this article shows, first, that these women’s gendered subjectivity is formed by both habitual and intentional actions that defying the oppression and resistance duality within patriarchal Turkish society. Second, in dialogue with the scholarship on the “classic patriarchal bargain”1 and feminist analyses of neoliberal social policy, the article suggests that these grandmothers’ inarticulate desire to live in solidarity with the younger generation of women may be turned into a government instrument in the context of Turkey’s increasingly family-centered neoliberal social policy environment.

Type
Articles
Copyright
© New Perspectives on Turkey and Cambridge University Press 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Acar, Feride and Altunok, Gülbanu. “The ‘Politics of Intimate’ at the Intersection of Neo-Liberalism and Neo-Conservatism in Contemporary Turkey.” Women’s Studies International Forum 41 (November 2013): 1423. doi: 10.1016/j.wsif.2012.10.001.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bayraktar, Sevi. Makbul Anneler, Müstakbel Vatandaşlar: Neoliberal Beden Politikalarında Annelik. İstanbul: Ayizi Yayınları, 2011.Google Scholar
Blome, Agnes. Family and the Welfare State in Europe: Intergenerational Relations in Ageing Societies. Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar, 2009.Google Scholar
Bolak, Hale Cihan. “When Wives are Major Providers: Culture, Gender, and Family Work.” Gender & Society 11, no. 4 (August 1, 1997): 409433.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bora, Aksu. “Türk Modernleşme Sürecinde Annelik Kimliğinin Dönüşümü.” In Yerli Bir Feminizme Doğru. Edited by İlyasoğlu, Aynur and Akgökçe, Necla. İstanbul: Sel Yayıncılık, 2001. 77107.Google Scholar
Bora, Aksu. Kadınların Sınıfı: Ücretli Ev Emeği ve Kadın Öznelliğinin Inşası. İstanbul: İletişim, 2008.Google Scholar
Bordone, Valeria, Arpino, Bruno, and Aassve, Arnstein. “Patterns of Grandparental Child Care across Europe: The Role of the Policy Context and Working Mothers’ Need.” Ageing & Society 37, no. 4 (February 2016): 129.Google Scholar
Buğra, Ayşe. “Türkiye’nin Değişen Refah Rejimi: Neoliberalizm, Kültürel Muhafazakarlık ve Yeniden Tanımlanan Toplumsal Dayanışma.” In Türkiye’de Refah Devleti ve Kadın. Edited by Dedeoğlu, Saniye and AdemElveren, Y.. İstanbul: İletişim, 2012. 4770.Google Scholar
Buğra, Ayşe and Candaş, Aysen. “Change and Continuity under an Eclectic Social Security Regime: The Case of Turkey.” Middle Eastern Studies 47, no. 3 (May 1, 2011): 515528.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buğra, Ayşe and Yakut-Cakar, Burcu. “Structural Change, the Social Policy Environment and Female Employment in Turkey.” Development and Change 41, no. 3 (May 1, 2010): 517538.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cartier, Carolyn. “From Home to Hospital and Back Again: Economic Restructuring, End of Life, and the Gendered Problems of Place-Switching Health Services.” Social Science & Medicine 56, no. 11(June 2003): 22892301.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Chuang, Julia. “Factory Girls after the Factory: Female Return Migrations in Rural China.” Gender & Society 30, no. 3 (June 1, 2016): 467489.Google Scholar
Conlon, Catherine, Timonen, Virpi, Carney, Gemma, and Scharf, Thomas. “Women (Re)Negotiating Care across Family Generations: Intersections of Gender and Socioeconomic Status.” Gender & Society 28, no. 5 (October 1, 2014): 729751.Google Scholar
Coşar, Simten and Yeğenoğlu, Metin. “New Grounds for Patriarchy in Turkey? Gender Policy in the Age of AKP.” South European Society and Politics 16, no. 4 (December 1, 2011): 555573.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dedeoğlu, Saniye. “Working for Family: The Role of Women’s Informal Labor in the Survival of Family-Owned Garment Ateliers in Istanbul, Turkey.” Working Paper #281 (May 2004). http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.203.3920&rep=rep1&type=pdf.Google Scholar
Dedeoğlu, Saniye. “Visible Hands–Invisible Women: Garment Production in Turkey.” Feminist Economics 16, no. 4 (2010): 132.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dedeoğlu, Saniye. “Garment Ateliers and Women Workers in Istanbul: Wives, Daughters and Azerbaijani Immigrants.” Middle Eastern Studies 47, no. 4 (2011): 663674.Google Scholar
Devault, Marjorie L. “Talking and Listening from Women’s Standpoint: Feminist Strategies for Interviewing and Analysis.” Social Problems 37, no. 1 (February 1, 1990): 96116. doi: 10.2307/800797.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duben, Alan. “Generations of Istanbul Families, the Elderly, and the Social Economy of Welfare.” New Perspectives on Turkey 48 (April 2013): 554.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ecevit, Yıldız.Türkiye’de Sosyal Politika Çalışmalarının Toplumsal Cinsiyet Bakış Açısıyla Gelişimi.” In Turkiye’de Refah Devleti ve Kadın. Edited by Dedeoğlu, Saniye and Elveren, Adem Y.. İstanbul: Iletisim, 2012. 1128.Google Scholar
Ehrenreich, Barbara and Hochschild, Arlie Russell. Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2003.Google Scholar
Esping-Andersen, Gosta. Social Foundations of Postindustrial Economies. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ghezzi, Simone. “Parenthood and the Structuring of Time among Urban Households in Northern Italy.” Ethnologie Française 42, no. 1 (December 20, 2011): 3744.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Glenn, Evelyn Nakano. Forced to Care: Coercion and Caregiving in America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010.Google Scholar
Heinemann, Laura L. “Accommodating Care: Transplant Caregiving and the Melding of Health Care with Home Life in the United States.” Medicine Anthropology Theory 2, no. 1 (2015): 3256.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hochschild, Arlie. “The Nanny Chain.” The American Prospect. December 19, 2001. http://prospect.org/article/nanny-chain.Google Scholar
Hoff, Andreas.Patterns of Intergenerational Support in Grandparent-Grandchild and Parent-Child Relationships in Germany.” Ageing & Society 27, no. 5 (September 2007): 643665.Google Scholar
Igel, Corinne, and Szydlik, Marc. “Grandchild Care and Welfare State Arrangements in Europe.” Journal of European Social Policy 21, no. 3 (July 1, 2011): 210224.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Isaksen, Lise Widding, Uma Devi, Sambasivan, Hochschild, Arlie Russell. “Global Care Crisis: A Problem of Capital, Care Chain, or Commons?American Behavioral Scientist 52, no. 3 (November 1, 2008): 405425.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kandiyoti, Deniz. “Bargaining with Patriarchy.” Gender & Society 2, no. 3 (September 1, 1988): 274290.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kandiyoti, Deniz. “Gender, Power and Contestation: Rethinking ‘Bargaining with Patriarchy.’” In Feminist Visions of Development: Gender Analysis and Policy. Edited by Pearson, Ruth and Jackson, Cecile. London: Routledge, 1998. 135152.Google Scholar
Kaya, Ayhan. “Islamisation of Turkey under the AKP Rule: Empowering Family, Faith and Charity.” South European Society and Politics 20, no. 1 (January 2, 2015): 4769.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, Jaerim and Bauer, Jean W.. “Motivations for Providing and Utilizing Child Care by Grandmothers in South Korea.” Journal of Marriage and Family 75, no. 2 (2013): 381402.Google Scholar
Linde, Charlotte. Life Stories: The Creation of Coherence. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Luhrmann, T. M. “Subjectivity.” Anthropological Theory 6, no. 3 (September 1, 2006): 345361.Google Scholar
Mattingly, Cheryl, Grøn, Lone, and Meinert, Lotte. “Chronic Homework in Emerging Borderlands of Healthcare.” Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry 35, no. 3 (September 1, 2011): 347375.Google ScholarPubMed
Meyer, Madonna Harrington. Grandmothers at Work: Juggling Families and Jobs. New York: NYU Press, 2014.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Wendy and Green, Eileen. “‘I Don’t Know What I’d Do without Our Mam’: Motherhood, Identity and Support Networks.” The Sociological Review 50, no. 1 (February 1, 2002): 122.Google Scholar
Mottram, , Alıçlı, Sanem and Hortaçsu, Nuran. “Adult Daughter Aging Mother Relationship over the Life Cycle: The Turkish Case.” Journal of Aging Studies 19, no. 4 (December 1, 2005): 471488.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ong, Aihwa. Spirits of Resistance and Capitalist Discipline: Factory Women in Malaysia. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987.Google Scholar
Ortner, Sherry B. “Is Female to Male as Nature Is to Culture?Feminist Studies 1, no. 2 (1972): 531.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Özar, Şemsa and Yakut-Cakar, Burcu. “Unfolding the Invisibility of Women without Men in the Case of Turkey.” Women’s Studies International Forum 41 (November 2013): 2434.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Özbay, Ferhunde. Dünden Bugüne: Aile, Kent ve Nüfus. İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2015.Google Scholar
Özyegin, Gül. Başkalarının Kiri: Kapıcılar, Gündelikçiler ve Kadınlıkhalleri. Translated by Öncü, Suğra. İstanbul: İletişim, 2005.Google Scholar
Parreñas, Rhacel Salazar, . “The Reproductive Labour of Migrant Workers.” Global Networks 12, no. 2 (April 1, 2012): 269275.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Riessman, Catherine Kohler. “When Gender Is Not Enough: Women Interviewing Women.” Gender & Society 1, no. 2 (June 1, 1987): 172207.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Silverstein, Merril, Giarrusso, Roseann, and Bengtson, Vern L.. “Grandparents and Grandchildren in Family Systems: A Social-Developmental Perspective.” In Global Aging and Its Challenge to Families. Edited by Bengtson, Vern L. and Lowenstein, Ariela. New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 2003. 75102.Google Scholar
Smith-Osborne, Alexa and Felderhoff, Brandi. “Veterans’ Informal Caregivers in the ‘Sandwich Generation’: A Systematic Review toward a Resilience Model.” Journal of Gerontological Social Work 57, no. 6–7 (2014): 556584.Google Scholar
Toksöz, Gülay. “Neoliberal Piyasa, Özel ve Kamusal Patriarka Çıkmazında Kadın Emeği.” In Turkiye’de Refah Devleti ve Kadın. Edited by Dedeoğlu, Saniye and AdemElveren, Y.. İstanbul: İletişim, 2012. 103126.Google Scholar
Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Aile, Calışma ve Sosyal Hizmetler Bakanlığı. “Kadının Statüsü Genel Müdürlüğü Tamamlanan Projeler.” https://www.ailevecalisma.gov.tr/KSGM/PDF/ksgb_tamamlanan_projeler_ekim_2018.pdf, 12.Google Scholar
Türkiye İstatistik Kurumu (TÜİK). “Aile Yapısı Araştırması, 2016.” http://www.tuik.gov.tr/PreHaberBultenleri.do?id=21869.Google Scholar
Weeks, Kathi. “Subject for a Feminist Standpoint.” In Marxism beyond Marxism. Edited by Makdisi, Saree, Casarino, Cesare, and Karl, Rebecca. New York: Routledge, 1996. 89118.Google Scholar
Yarris, Kristin Elizabeth. Care across Generations: Solidarity and Sacrifice in Transnational Families. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2017.Google Scholar
Yazıcı, Berna. “The Return to the Family: Welfare, State, and Politics of the Family in Turkey.” Anthropological Quarterly 85, no. 1 (February 25, 2012): 103140.Google Scholar
Yifei, Shen. “China in the ‘Post-Patriarchal Era.’Chinese Sociology & Anthropology 43, no. 4 (July 1, 2011): 523.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Young, Iris Marion. “Lived Body vs Gender: Reflections on Social Structure and Subjectivity.” Ratio 15, no. 4 (2002): 410428.CrossRefGoogle Scholar