Instead, this paper starts with the assumption that the total value of the income able to be attributed to child care use is the sum of the income earned by child care users. While there are numerous qualifications to this assumption, it is still a rather simplistic foundation. However, a number of papers have chosen a similar starting point (for example, MCubed 2002; Anstie et al. 1988) as it, nonetheless, provides a place to begin.

In this chapter, these current formulations of access to paid employment and their implications for work and family arrangements will be critically assessed. It starts from the basic premise that any shift in the policy logic that aims to give more salience to the employment issue should begin from a cautious consideration of the balance between paid and unpaid work, and the extent to which it is influenced by welfare divisions between the state, the market, the family and the informal sector. The recalibration between paid and unpaid work introduces important changes in the logic of welfare rights as well as in the way we think about the world of labour.

My argument in this Article is a mirror image of such debates about the newly perceived advantages of the private sector assuming tasks historically located within the public sphere. In the pages that follow I argue for the assertion of collective or public responsibility for dependency-a status or condition that historically has been deemed appropriately assigned to the private sphere.

In this article I do not propose to focus directly on what we might call the gender system-that is, the structures of our labour market and our welfare state. Rather than elaborating on feminist critiques of the Howard government's approach to the labour market and welfare reform I want to talk about the reasons why this approach produces so little opposition. I want to focus on the gender culture in Australia today, not because I wish to privilege culture, let alone attitudes, in any causal analysis. Attitudes are shaped by historical structures and must, themselves, be explained. But it is also the case that culture and attitudes must be taken seriously if we are to understand this loss of momentum in the gender equality agenda, and the existence of visible and damaging conflicts between women over family life and the care of children.

In this paper, I consider some political and moral issues that arise from the increasingly common phenomenon of migrant careworkers who are part of transnational families, often mothers of children who are left behind, but also daughters who leave behind elderly relatives who may need care. This is a phenomenon that Arlie Hochschild calls the "global care chain." In the first part of this paper, I will consider that this phenomenon poses a challenge, if not an outright dilemma, first for those of us who want to envision a state that takes on a feminist ethics of care as a public ethic and, second, for feminist aspirations for the full range of work/career opportunities. Each of these hopes and expectations are meant to benefit all women but are, in fact, being realized only by some women and in some nations. The achievements often rest on the labor of other women who serve as paid caregivers for dependents, women whose home of origin is often another poorer nation. In the second half, I want to consider the moral resources that can help us diagnose the nature of the injustice and the moral harm such practices entail and determine what, if any, moral resources are available to help us resolve the dilemma(s) I flag in the first half of the paper.

The preference for an only slightly updated version of the traditional nuclear family is invoked for the sake of children: "Communitarians believe that the highest social value should be placed on parent-child relationships and the fostering of a child-centered society." 1I The preference for a single family form, one which has traditionally been oppressive to women, and even the call for society to be "child-centered," must give feminists pause. I shall argue that these resolutions land the new communitarians back in the position of the old communitarians. But the new communitarians have access to political decision making that the older communitarians could not dream of. Some leading figures of the new communitarians, such as William Galston, have been involved in policy-making positions in the Clinton administration. A Democratic presidential candidate has professed some degree of adherence to the new communitarianism, as have many New Democrats. Given the scope of their influence, an examination of the relation between the new communitarians and feminism, especially with respect to policies that most affect women and the family, is of more than academic interest. If feminism has long faced an assault from the Right, the new communitarians, with respect to their position on the family, pose a potential challenge from the Left. This article engages some of the considerations that have prompted their position. It reveals that their resolution to these problems include presuppositions that have pervaded political philosophy and have made so much political thought inhospitable to crucial feminist concerns. And finally it offers an alternative way to address these concerns, along with specific recommendations for public policy.