ABSTRACT
Insufficient attention has been paid to the mechanisms by which some states of dependency are created, the motives underlying state intervention in the provision of community care, and the extent to which these community care policies rely on an unequal sexual division of labor within the family. Community care has been an explicit policy goal in Britain since the end of World War II. But the development of opinion against institutional care and in favor of community care in the immediate post-war period was primarily concerned with children. In Great Britain, as in other advanced industrial societies, much has been written and spoken about the growth of the “dependent” sectors of the population—particularly the elderly—and the “burden” they represent to the concomitantly shrinking productive population. The rise in the numbers of elderly people has indeed created difficult problems for families, health services, and social service departments.
