The Communicative Relationship Between Dialogue and Care By Mari ...

house, the children, a spouse, the elderly, and so forth. As women historically have been seen as subordinate to men, their “work” is by association regarded as inferior. In our society, the public sphere is where one gains respect and value through independence, financial success, and self-determination. “Women are defined as nurturers, the people who provide comfort, compassion, and care. Men, meanwhile, go about doing the ‘important stuff’” (Wood, 1994, p. 12). We have constructed a world in which caring is not among the “important stuff.”

Wood (1994) explained the misguided understanding of the unimportance of caring and offered several indications of its continuing devaluation in contemporary American society. Wood highlighted the fact that “of all the developed countries in the world, America provides the least support for child care and child rearing” (1994, p. 21). In the workplace, few companies provide assistance or allowances for those with children or those caring for elderly parents. When it comes to governmental budgetary decisions, educational and social programs (those that provide care) receive the first cuts to their already low allowances. In each of these examples, there are social or governmental messages that communicate to our culture that caring is not valued. In explicating the devaluation of caring, Wood argued that it is necessary to look at current social and government practices and social structures used when referring to those who serve as caregivers.

Caring is not only devalued because it is seen as women's work or because government and the workplace ignore its importance; caring is devalued by prominent elements of the contemporary postmodern condition as well. For example, the postmodern emergence of individualism has negative consequences for how we as a society look at caring. Since independence and self-determination are such highly valued qualities, caring is interpreted as evidence of a sign of weakness, and thereby caregivers are seen as less desirable. Gordon, Benner, and Noddings (1996) explained the individualistic aversion to care: