LAUSR

Despite the growing sociological and anthropological literature on paid care-giving and domestic work, there continues to be a gap in the scholarship on delegated care work, namely, the invisibility of children as care-receivers. The article argues for the incorporation of children’s experiences, expectations and perceptions with paid care work. I review both empirical and theoretical work to shed light on what we know about children as care recipients based on current scholarship, which relies mainly on the perspectives of care-givers and care-managers. The aim is to emphasize the importance and necessity of looking at the children’s perspective. Throughout the article, I formulate several questions which should be asked and answered in future research which integrate the recipients’ perspective. I argue that addressing the perspective of these children is not just to add and stir in another perspective to the already-established framework of paid childcare. Rather, it leads us to re-think the grounds of research on care work, generating a new research agenda.