Embodied care

Care work is done with a body, in a room, over time: lifting, washing, feeding, sitting with someone who is frightened, noticing what was not said. Robots and monitoring systems take over discrete tasks and will take over more, which is welcome where hands are short. What is held is the relation itself: being cared for by someone who can be tired, who chose to come back, and who is answerable to you and to your family. Care ethics, from Tronto to Kittay, describes this as a moral relation between persons rather than a service, and that description has not been displaced.