Just a token commitment? Women's involvement in a local babysitting circle.

This article focuses on a neighbourhood babysitting circle operating in a small town within the southeast of England, showing how and why it operates in particular ways and the significance it has for women's contacts with other mothers in one locality, with male partners and with kin outside the individual woman's household. Examining these contacts allows broader issues to be raised, for example, about the interconnections between social class and locality, notions of “public” and “private,” and the interface between individual womens' perspectives and decisions on child care (including aspects of their “authority” and “responsibility” as mothers), and their patterns of association within local groups and networks.