ABSTRACT
A ‘Conclusion’ to this type of book can mean different things. Some authors provide a helpful summary and overview of the book’s contents, a condensed guide to the findings of the study. We are not attempting that kind of conclusion. With a very rich data set, analysed with reference to some difficult theoretical questions, we feel that we could not summarise the complexities discussed in preceding chapters without compromising them or misrepresenting them. Instead we have chosen to make this a more substantive conclusion. We are using it to draw the key strands of our argument together, in order to make explicit the distinctive view of family responsibilities at which we have arrived, and to consider some of its implications.
