The Impact of Economic, Social, Cultural and Emotional Capital on Mothers’ Love and Care Work in Education

Abstract

This chapter discusses the performance of love and care work in the paradigmatic context of mothering. It explores the care work mothers do in the field of education in particular. It suggests that the emotional care work performed by mothers in the educational field is an expression of what mothers understand as their love for their children (O’Brien, 2007). This forms part of the general mothering and domestic work that mothers do as part of their daily routines of care (O’Brien, 2005). The work of care, however, does not happen ‘naturally’ and effortlessly, and the capacities of mothers to activate economic, cultural, social and emotional capitals shape their care, and the exchange of that caring in the educational field.