Chapter 15: Woman the Caregiver: Ways of Sharing Childcare in Two Contemporary Brazilian Contexts

In this chapter, we resort to history, sociology, and psychology in order to cast a look at women in their multifaceted and interdependent positions— as workers, as individuals, and citizens, and particularly as mothers and caregivers. Our core questions are: is childcare in early life a shared endeavor? If so, under which criteria is it shared? Are women deemed the main caregivers irrespective of life contexts and of their labor commitments, or are parental roles undergoing noticeable changes?

Women’s participation in the world of labor, meaning any activities that contribute to their families’ and/or their social groups’ subsistence, is a feature of humankind since prehistoric times. In preagricultural societies, women gathered fruits, roots and, other vegetable food while men fished and/or hunted, and in a few cases they also took part in men’s tasks; according to reports on modern hunter-gatherers, gathering was responsible for 70% of the groups’ subsistence, since the products of hunting were vulnerable to chance, failure, and delays (Leakey, 1981; Leakey & Lewin, 1980). With the advent of agriculture and property, women’s social position underwent major changes (Engels, 2002), with their restriction mainly to domestic tasks involved in the care for larger offspring and households, but still, in several circumstances, taking part in minor external tasks such as sowing or harvesting—though not in trading goods or managing the farms except under exceptional circumstances. For instance, in the sixteenth century, wives of the owners of colonial donations in Brazil were sometimes charged with the administration of the patrimony during their husbands’ leaves for wars and other adventures (Samara, 2002).