Towards interdependence: using slings to inspire a new understanding of parental care

Based on empirical research with parents who carry their children in slings, I propose what I hope will be a new and more progressive way of understanding of parental care relationships, where ideas of dependence/independence are replaced by those of interdependence. Through engagement with feminist literatures which stress relationality between humans and non-humans, I suggest that it may be helpful to broaden our understanding of parental care from an exclusive focus on the mother–child relationship in order to recognise a wider range of actors as participating in this process – including children themselves and the more than human world. Crucially, I also consider the potential for care to flow in multiple directions within these relationships.