Understanding midlife single women’s care as radical

Single women’s lives are important but marginalised. The care that they do is meaningful and can be radical. In this article, we argue that within neoliberal patriarchal capitalism, radical care work is care that emerges from the margins, is self-and-other regarding and envisions change through maintenance and small acts. This definition draws insights from an emerging body of literature that uses the term ‘radical care’ to explore its potential in empirical studies of care and interview data with UK single women in midlife (37–62 years old), with and without children and experiences of romantic relationships. We develop the concept of radical care through a reflexive thematic analysis of accounts of care performed by these women. The decisions they make about their relationships are in part made by the care that those relationships enact, and single status allows rationalities of care to emerge which are not driven or defined by the pervasive ‘couple-norm’ that marginalises them. We argue that this kind of care work, governed by pursuit of a life that is meaningful and self-sustaining, is radical because it pushes against the neoliberal edicts of self-advancement and competition and instead centres relationality, survival and world-repair. By foregrounding the common yet marginal status of female singlehood in midlife, this article develops a vantage point that advances debates about radical care.