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

advance our culture through technology. We seek quicker, better ways of doing things. In this quest, we neglect the things that make us human. We neglect and ignore caring relationships because we do not see their value. Value in our society is placed on material goods, individual success, and technological advances, leaving caring and caring practices in a crisis. The seemingly eternal devaluation of caring leaves the significance and the necessity of caring relationships in the dark, eclipsed. Caring continues to be viewed as a matter for unimportant people in the private sphere. The important people are out “in the world,” making a name for themselves, by themselves. Caring communicates only weakness to a society that believes success must be earned alone. An individualistic society leaves no room for the interdependence of caring. However, in recent times, the need for society as a whole to recognize the necessity of caring has come to the foreground.

The Changes that Demand Change

The crisis of caring is not only caused by the devaluation of the importance of caring and caring practices, but it is further escalated because of the changes that have occurred in this moment that demand us to change our views toward caring. This moment calls us into the responsibility of care more than ever before for two primary reasons. First, the face of the family no longer looks like the picture drawn by de Tocqueville. The traditional family is hard to find in today's world. Due to the changes in the family and the fact that more women than ever before are working outside of the home in full-time capacities, the roles of men and women have been in some cases blurred and in some cases completely reversed. Second, due to the overwhelming increase of elderly who need care, many people are finding themselves in the unexpected position of taking care of elderly relatives.

In The Democracy of America, de Tocqueville (2001) described the condition of men and women in the United States as equal; however, he carefully explained that the sexes, being completely different in both physical and moral constitution, are called to different duties. According to de Tocqueville, early Americans took great care in creating “cleanly