Childcare struggles, maternal workers and social reproduction. By Maud Perrier (Ed.), Bristol: Bristol University Press. 2022. pp. 148. £80.00. ISBN: 978-1-5292-1492-5

Maud Perrier is an important contributor to the sociology of families and childcare and builds on over a decade of research in the areas of motherhood, social class and feminist theory to produce this much anticipated manuscript, ‘Childcare Struggles, Maternal Workers and Social Reproduction’ (Bristol University Press, 2022). Perrier begins this immersive and exciting text by telling us that childcare poses one of the greatest ‘ethical, practical and political challenges to 21st Century feminism’. This is undoubtedly the case. The unstable situation for childcare workers, parents and carers and young children in the Covid-19 era has been one of rapid changes and ‘making do’ childcare options alongside seemingly unending and unpredictable policy shifts for care providers, parents and grandparents alike. It has been an incredibly difficult time for those with caring responsibilities at a point in history when parents, mothers, and those who work in care, were already overburdened (English, 2022; Hardy et al, 2022). What Perrier brings us in this thought-provoking work is an analysis of what Social Reproduction Theory (SRT) can do to improve this situation across the incredible range of people- paid and unpaid- who undertake the care of young people.