ABSTRACT
Parents of young children often experience an extremely stressful period in their life, when care and parenting tasks coincide with the beginning of a career and the positioning in society. This period has been identified as the ‘rush hour of life’ (Bertram et al. 2006; Bittman and Wajcman 2000). In such a situation of shortage of time, families must find support. They can either try to rely on the extended family, public institutions, the market or on other forms of community. As we have argued in the introduction, the ways in which some people make their lives in the city inflict on the possibilities of others to turn resources into capabilities, as fluid interactions and durable engagements include and marginalize at the same time.
