Life long women labour: Caregiving role of grandmothers in social reproduction

"Lifelong Women Labor: Caregiving Role of Grandmothers in Social Reproduction" themed master's thesis analyzed the place and importance of grandmother's caregiving labor in child caregiving which is one of social reproduction ways. In Turkey, due to the insufficiency in public and private caregiving services, grandmothers undertake childcare which consists emotional labor. This study aims to make grandmothers motivations of taking the decision, their important effort and effects of this effort on caregiver grandmothers lives more visible. Since this study intends to research and talk about women experiences and make women labor more talkable in academics, the research is written with the help of feminist standpoint method. For this purpose, semi-structured in-depth interviews are conducted with twenty-one grandmothers who come from different socio-economic statuses. During the interviews, grandmothers were asked about maintenance times and days, what they face during the care, and the positive and negative experiences they had. The reasons which included grandmothers in the care process were examined. The results of the field research suggest that the experience of grandchild care and the meanings attributed to this experience differ widely according to the socio-economic status of women. Grandmothers who relatively has higher socio-economic status (mostly employ professional caregivers), declare their efforts more like helping the mother or organizing the care work. On the other hand, grandmothers, who are socio-economically disadvantaged, make grandchild care experience as a method of struggle with the existing economic difficulties and often refer to this as necessity. In addition, the socio-economic situation also influences grandparents' leisure time and social activities, and this situation changes the way they experience grandchild care. The issue of economic class creates a difference in experience among women who look after their grandchildren as in every subject.