Care Dictionary

A living dictionary of care concepts that often remain invisible in economic indicators, datasets, and public policy despite sustaining societies and everyday life.

1. Unpaid Care Work

Work performed without financial compensation to meet the physical, emotional, and cognitive needs of children, older adults, people with disabilities, or other adults who require care.

2. Unpaid Domestic Work

Unpaid activities necessary for the daily functioning of a household that are not sold in the market and are disproportionately carried out by women.

3. Care Economy

The economic and social system created by all paid and unpaid care activities that enable people to sustain their daily lives and societies to reproduce themselves across generations.

4. Care Crisis

A condition of structural unsustainability created by the growing gap between rising care needs and insufficient care provision.

5. Ethics of Care

An ethical framework that derives moral action from relationships, embodied practices, and concrete acts of care rather than abstract principles alone.

6. Emotional Labour

The effort involved in responding to the emotional needs of others by comforting, reassuring, supporting, or uplifting them. It often includes managing one’s own emotions in order to create a sense of trust and wellbeing for others.

7. Mental Load

Also known as the labour of planning and anticipation. It includes invisible managerial tasks such as remembering appointments, tracking supplies, anticipating needs, and coordinating household or caregiving responsibilities.

8. Access Intimacy

A concept developed by Mia Mingus describing the feeling of being deeply understood when one’s access needs are recognized and accommodated without constant explanation. It highlights accessibility as a relational and human experience rather than merely a technical one.

9. Spoon Theory

A metaphor used to describe the limited energy resources of people with chronic illnesses or disabilities. Everyday activities consume a finite number of “spoons,” requiring careful decisions about how energy is spent.

10. Crip Time

A concept closely related to Spoon Theory that challenges conventional expectations of speed, productivity, and efficiency. It recognizes that disabled, chronically ill, or older people may experience and organize time differently.

11. Time Poverty

A situation in which paid work and caregiving responsibilities leave individuals with little or no time for rest, leisure, social participation, or personal wellbeing.

12. Social Reproduction

The set of paid and unpaid activities, relationships, and institutions that sustain people and societies on a daily, generational, and collective basis. It includes the work required to keep individuals healthy, fed, educated, cared for, and emotionally supported.

13. The Second Shift

A term coined by sociologist Arlie Hochschild to describe the unpaid domestic and caregiving work many women perform after completing a full day of paid employment.

14. Global Care Chains

The transnational transfer of care work through migration. For example, when a migrant care worker leaves their own family to provide care in another country, care responsibilities are shifted across borders and social inequalities.

15. Radical Care

An approach that views care not only as a responsibility but also as a form of resistance and collective survival, particularly for communities and bodies marginalized by dominant systems.

16. Interdependence

The recognition that individuals and communities rely on one another materially, emotionally, socially, and structurally in order to live and thrive.

17. Codependency

An unhealthy relational pattern in which a person consistently neglects their own needs while excessively prioritizing the needs of others.

18. Sandwich Generation

Adults who simultaneously care for their children and their ageing parents, often experiencing significant caregiving pressures from both directions.

19. Care Infrastructure

The systems, services, policies, and institutions that make care possible, including childcare centres, eldercare services, paid leave policies, caregiver supports, and community-based care arrangements.

20. Care Commons

Models of care that are collectively organized by communities, neighbourhoods, and social networks rather than relying exclusively on markets or state institutions.

21. Moral Injury

The profound emotional and psychological distress experienced when caregivers are unable to provide the care they believe is ethically necessary due to systemic constraints such as limited resources, staffing shortages, or restrictive policies.

22. Relational Autonomy

A concept that challenges the ideal of the fully independent individual by arguing that autonomy is made possible through supportive relationships and networks of care.

23. Collective Care

Approaches in which responsibility for care is shared across governments, communities, institutions, families, and individuals rather than being placed solely on individuals or households.

24. Self-Care

The capacity to maintain one’s physical, emotional, and mental wellbeing through practices of self-support, boundary-setting, and attending to personal needs, while recognizing that self-care is shaped by broader social and structural conditions.

25. Care Drain

Similar to “brain drain,” this term describes the loss of professional caregivers, such as nurses and care workers, from lower-income countries to wealthier countries, creating care shortages in their places of origin.

26. Kin Keeping

The often invisible work of maintaining family and community relationships through activities such as remembering birthdays, organizing gatherings, mediating conflicts, and sustaining social connections.

27. Worry Work

An intensified form of mental load involving the ongoing emotional labour of anticipating risks, imagining potential problems, and remaining constantly alert to the wellbeing of others.

28. Default Parent

The parent whom systems automatically assume is responsible for a child’s care. When a child gets sick, schools call this person first; when something is missing at home, they are the one expected to know where it is. Most often shaped by gender norms, the default parent carries an ongoing mental responsibility that rarely switches off, even during paid work.

29. Promiscuous Care

A concept proposed by the authors of The Care Manifesto. It challenges the idea that care should be limited to family ties or the nuclear household. Instead, it argues that we have responsibilities of care toward strangers, distant communities, and people beyond our immediate circles. Promiscuous care expands the boundaries of who is considered worthy of care.

30. Relational Poverty

The absence not only of material resources but also of reliable social relationships that people can turn to for support, trust, and care when needed. Relational poverty highlights how social isolation and fragmented communities contribute to care crises.

31. Care-Full Design

An approach to designing cities, institutions, technologies, and policies that recognizes human vulnerability and interdependence. Rather than prioritizing efficiency alone, care-full design considers accessibility, wellbeing, safety, and the diverse care needs of individuals and communities.

32. Right to Care

The recognition that both receiving care and having the time, resources, and support to provide care are fundamental human and citizenship rights. Care should not be treated as a privilege available only to those with sufficient resources.

33. Privileged Irresponsibility

A concept developed by Joan Tronto describing the ability of certain groups to avoid, ignore, or delegate care responsibilities to others. This is not merely an individual choice but a structural privilege rooted in unequal social and economic arrangements.

34. Care Deprivation

A condition in which individuals or communities are unable to access the physical, emotional, or social care necessary for wellbeing and survival. Care deprivation extends beyond material poverty to include relational and temporal dimensions of unmet need.

35. Care Justice

A political framework that examines who provides care, under what conditions, for whom, and at what cost. Care justice treats care as a question of rights, equity, power, and resource distribution rather than a private obligation.

36. Externalization of Care

The process through which governments, markets, or institutions shift responsibility for care onto households, women, migrant workers, or communities. This transfer is often justified through narratives of flexibility, personal responsibility, or family values.

37. Care Hypervigilance

A state in which caregivers remain constantly alert to potential risks, needs, and emergencies. This ongoing vigilance can prevent genuine rest and contribute to emotional exhaustion and burnout.

38. Depoliticization of Care

The framing of care as a matter of love, sacrifice, or personal choice rather than a public, political, and structural issue. Depoliticization obscures questions of inequality, responsibility, and policy.

39. Care Literacy

The ability of individuals and institutions to understand how care systems function, who provides care, under what conditions care is sustained, and what resources are required to support it. Care literacy includes the capacity to recognize, name, value, and advocate for care.

40. Care Debt

The accumulated social and institutional debt created when societies, governments, or organizations rely for long periods on unpaid and invisible care work without adequately recognizing, supporting, or compensating it. Care debt often resurfaces through burnout, care crises, declining wellbeing, and intergenerational inequalities.

41. Digital Care Work

The care and support practices carried out through digital platforms and online spaces. This includes maintaining family WhatsApp groups, providing emotional support online, being present through messages during crises, moderating content, or nurturing digital communities. Digital care work often becomes invisible and unpaid due to expectations of constant availability and responsiveness.

42. Digital Care Labour

The often invisible work required to keep online spaces safe, sustainable, and functional. Activities such as content moderation, community management, online emotional support, technical maintenance, data cleaning, and digital organization all form part of the care labour that sustains digital environments.

43. More-than-Human Care

An approach that recognizes care as extending beyond human relationships to include the ecosystems, animals, plants, waters, and material environments that make life possible. More-than-human care highlights the interdependent relationships between humans and the wider living world.

44. Long-Term Care

Ongoing support provided to individuals who are unable to carry out daily activities independently due to ageing, disability, or chronic illness. Long-term care may include personal care, household support, social participation, and health-related assistance, and is often provided by family members, particularly women.

45. Shadow Care Chain

A concept describing how care responsibilities do not disappear during crises and emergency responses but are instead invisibly shifted elsewhere. In disaster response, humanitarian work, and social change initiatives, the care needs of staff, volunteers, and caregivers are often excluded from project design and budgets. Care is therefore redistributed rather than eliminated, moving onto other bodies, households, and communities.

46. Carer Poverty

The financial hardship experienced by individuals due to caregiving responsibilities. This may include loss of income, increased debt, reduced pension entitlements, and difficulty meeting basic needs. Carer poverty makes visible the economic costs of care within households and societies.

47. Young Carers

Children and young people under the age of eighteen who regularly provide care for a family member with illness, disability, addiction, or other support needs. This often invisible role can have long-term impacts on education, health, wellbeing, and social development.

48. Carer Loneliness

The social isolation that can result from intensive caregiving responsibilities. As social relationships narrow and opportunities for participation decrease, caregivers may experience heightened feelings of loneliness and exclusion.

49. Care Diamond

A framework that recognizes care as being distributed among four interconnected actors: the state, the market, families, and communities. The care diamond helps reveal who provides care, through what resources, and how care responsibilities are distributed across society.

50. Care Policies

Public policies designed to recognize, reduce, and redistribute unpaid care work. These policies may provide resources in the form of income support, services, leave entitlements, legal protections, or other measures for caregivers and those receiving care.

51. Double Shift

A continuous state of labour in which paid work is followed by unpaid care work, emotional labour, and ongoing mental responsibilities. While related to the concept of the “second shift,” the double shift extends beyond household tasks to include the persistent mental management of family, relationships, and caregiving responsibilities throughout the day.

52. Unsolicited Care Advice

The experience of receiving unwanted guidance, recommendations, or instructions about how one should provide care. Often directed at caregivers—particularly women—such advice can undermine lived experience, diminish autonomy, and add to existing emotional and cognitive burdens, even when presented as helpful support.

53. Kinship Care

The care of children by relatives or close family friends rather than parents. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, siblings, or trusted community members may assume caregiving responsibilities, demonstrating that care is often organized through broader networks of relationships beyond the nuclear family.

54. Social Health

A person’s ability to build meaningful relationships, experience a sense of belonging, access mutual support networks, and participate in community life. Alongside physical and mental health, social health reflects the quality of care relationships that shape wellbeing.

55. Relational Wellbeing

An understanding of wellbeing that emphasizes the importance of trust, belonging, reciprocity, and supportive care networks. Rather than treating wellbeing solely as an individual achievement, relational wellbeing views it as something created and sustained through relationships.

56. Silver Economy

The range of economic activities shaped by the needs, preferences, and contributions of ageing populations. The silver economy includes healthcare, care services, accessible housing, assistive technologies, and social participation initiatives, viewing ageing as both a social reality and an opportunity for innovation and inclusion.

57. Respite Care

Short-term care support designed to provide caregivers with temporary relief from their responsibilities. Respite care enables caregivers to rest, attend to personal needs, and maintain their wellbeing, thereby supporting the sustainability of long-term caregiving arrangements.

58. Informal Carers

Individuals who provide care without financial compensation to family members, friends, neighbours, or others within their personal networks. Although they form the backbone of many care systems, informal carers often remain invisible within official statistics, policy frameworks, and economic calculations.

59. Care Leave

Legal provisions that allow individuals to take time away from work—either paid or unpaid—to care for children, older adults, disabled people, or other dependents. Care leave recognizes caregiving as a social responsibility that intersects with employment and public policy.

60. Care Transitions

Changes in care needs and care arrangements that occur throughout a person’s life. Examples include transitions from childhood to adulthood, independent living to supported living, or hospital care to home care. These moments often require individuals and care networks to reorganize and adapt.

61. Care Poverty

A condition in which a person lacks sufficient access to the care, support, attention, and relational resources necessary for wellbeing. Care poverty encompasses not only the absence of formal services but also weak support networks, limited opportunities for rest, and inadequate access to receiving care. A person may experience care poverty even while providing care to others.

62. Relationality

A perspective that understands people not as isolated individuals but as beings embedded within relationships, interdependencies, and shared social worlds. Relationality highlights how human lives are shaped through connections with others and with broader social and ecological systems.

63. Relational Capacity

The ability of individuals, communities, and institutions to build, sustain, deepen, and repair relationships based on trust and reciprocity. Relational capacity is a key component of social resilience and collective action.

64. Relational Infrastructure

The often invisible networks of trust, reciprocity, belonging, and social connection that enable communities to function and collaborate. Just as physical infrastructure supports economic activity, relational infrastructure supports social cohesion, democratic participation, and collective wellbeing.

65. Relational Intelligence

The capacity to build trust-based relationships, navigate differences constructively, address conflicts productively, and foster collaboration across diverse groups. Relational intelligence refers to the individual and collective skills needed to strengthen the quality of relationships.

66. Relational Readiness

The extent to which an individual, organization, or community is prepared to adopt and sustain relationship-centred approaches to work, decision-making, and collaboration. Relational readiness emphasizes that transformation requires not only technical capacity but also relational capacity.

67. Circles of Support

Networks of family members, friends, neighbours, colleagues, and communities that provide care, solidarity, and a sense of belonging in a person’s life. Strong circles of support enhance people’s ability to cope with challenges, navigate crises, and sustain wellbeing over time.