Unlike institutional care, domestic care in the premodern era has only recently begun to emerge as a field of interdisciplinary research. New perspectives on social groups and networks, body history, dis/ability history, and other overlapping approaches have favoured a shift of focus towards caregiving within families, households, friendships, and neighbourhoods. Microhistorical and case studies have unearthed a number of formerly unknown or disregarded sources that shed light on the practices and spaces, organization, and financing of domestic or ‘private’ care for infirm persons. Scholars using the lens of gender have added details and contours to formerly general notions that in premodern societies both women and men actively engaged in caregiving and were cared for. Domestic caregiving was identified as an acknowledged field of female and male work within late medieval and early modern urban economies. Linking communal and private spheres, it created and shaped social nets between women and men of different social strata.

Still, many aspects of domestic care have not yet been examined systematically. There are few studies that cross disciplinary borders or proceed comparatively. General assumptions that within households women were more often associated with active care than men, or that specific activities were performed in accordance with gender-related norms and expectations, have to be tested by scrutinizing written, visual, and material evidence. Also, some basic questions should be considered in order to assess the extent to which premodern domestic care was a gendered field of action. Above all, what is the meaning of ‘domestic care’ with regard to premodern societies?