Wenn Mama eine psychische Erkrankung hat, wer macht dann die Care-Arbeit? Eine qualitative Analyse zur innerfamiliären Organisation von Care

The number of mental illnesses has been on the rise—not least in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. Women, in particular, are affected by mental illness. Also, women perform the majority of unpaid care work. But what happens when a mother is affected by a mental illness? Who will then do the care work? Based on 20 semi-narrative interviews with mothers with a mental illness, this article asks how care work is distributed in families in which a mother has a mental illness and to what extent changes in care practices occur. The results show that also in the context of a mental illness, primarily mothers carry out care work. Moreover, long-term changes in the organisation of care work mainly affect the ideas and practices of motherhood and less the ideas and practices of parenthood in general or fatherhood in particular.