Disability and family relationships: Mothers’ oblativity

This article examines the experiences of family caregivers of persons with disabilities in Italy, focusing on the cultural, institutional, and gendered mechanisms that render their care work invisible and constrain their autonomy. It develops the concept of oblativity to describe a socially structured posture of self-offering through which care, initially sustained by affection and moral responsibility, may progressively become a condition of self-estrangement. The study draws on 30 semi-structured interviews conducted in Western Sicily, with 26 women and four men, predominantly parents providing long-term care to children with disabilities. The findings show that caregiving responsibilities remain concentrated within the family and are disproportionately assigned to mothers, often without negotiation with partners or adequate support from welfare services. Participants’ narratives reveal disrupted professional trajectories, social isolation, emotional depletion, and a gradual fusion of personal identity with the caregiving role. In this context, oblativity differs from individual altruism: it identifies a gendered moral and institutional framework that normalises self-denial and transforms care into a totalising gift. The article argues that neoliberal familism and fragmented welfare provision reinforce this process by treating women’s unpaid availability as a private family resource. It concludes that overcoming oblative care requires the recognition of care as a public good and the development of collective, co-responsible welfare arrangements capable of protecting the dignity, autonomy, and social participation of both caregivers and care recipients.