Publisher： John Wiley & Sons Inc
E-ISSN： 1747-4469|43|1|230-237
ISSN： 0897-6546
Source： LAW & SOCIAL INQUIRY, Vol.43, Iss.1, 2018-02, pp. : 230-237
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Abstract
The notion that families should care for their own seems straightforward in its meaning. I suggest that it may not be. Building on the argument advanced in Sandra Levitsky's Caring for Our Own, and especially its focus on the discursive shaping of rights consciousness, I draw attention to three discourses that may be responsible for how the caregivers quoted in the book understand family responsibility. One is an American discourse about the limits of government; one is a therapeutic discourse that is enacted in the support groups from which the book's respondents mainly come; and one is a nativist discourse that pits the American‐born against newcomers. I argue that these discourses inflect the meaning of family responsibility in distinctive ways.
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