ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the impact and consequences that gendered concepts of dependency and responsibility can have for young people with a chronic condition. It examines the extent to which gendered expectations affected the negotiation of responsibility for the self-management of asthma and diabetes, and then explores the effects of gendered notions of dependency and responsibility. Drawing on the work of Goodnow and Delaney, Brannen makes the distinction between responsibility for clearing up after one’s self, which they call self-care work or self-maintenance, and responsibility for clearing up after others, or family-care work. When attempting to understand why only girls expressed these feelings of guilt, it appears that the reasons are inter-related. Because of gendered concepts of responsibility and dependency, girls were much more likely to be seen as independent in terms of self-management. Consequently, girls saw any alteration in regimens as their ‘fault’ in terms of the moral responsibility and moral blame that is attached to illness management.
