At the Limits of Care : Gendered Work and Stories That Matter

For author Janna Klostermann, reaching her limits and resigning from care work felt like a crisis of self.

In the aftermath of this upheaval, this is the book she needed to write.

At the Limits of Care will change how you think about care work and about the women who provide it. Now an assistant professor in sociology and a radical care scholar, Klostermann interrogates women’s counter-stories of reaching their limits, crossing ethical lines, and stepping back from paid or unpaid care work roles.

She uncovers gendered power dynamics and their constraining effects on women’s lives, transforming the ways we think about ourselves and our relationships. The book makes a major contribution in how and what constitutes care research.

Drawing on in-depth life history interviews with women ages twenty-seven to seventy-eight in Ontario, Canada, Klostermann enacts a “counter politics of care” approach that centres untold and lesser-told stories of care work.

She pushes readers to rethink gendered power dynamics, question prevailing tropes of care, and imagine more equitable, emancipatory futures. At the Limits of Care challenges dominant narratives around women and care through a blend of feminist sociological analyses and memoir.