Care giving and "Care" receiving between individualization and re-familization

In industrialized, capitalist welfare states, men could be de-familialized because they could also abandon their caring needs and obligations to women, who therefore remained bound to the family. The focus on women, and precisely on the reasons why they remained bound to the family, has increasingly highlighted that not only incomplete individualisation was at issue, but the overall issue of care. There is a need to reformulate the concept of autonomy in order to include the relationships of interdependence that develop around care giving and care receiving along the life course and to incorporate care giving and care receiving both conceptually and in practice in the structure of social rights and social citizenship themselves. The author discusses how different countries are addressing the issue of care following women's increasing labour market participation and the ageing of the population, showing that there are contrasting trends both across and within countries.