Forced to Care

If you think about it, this work of caring for our children as nannies, or our aging parents as homecare workers, is some of the most profound and important work in our lives. We call it the work that makes everything else possible, because it makes it possible for all of us to go out and do what we do every day, knowing that some of the most preci... See more

I hunger so deeply for us to shift from a focus on control to a focus on care in this country. If only we could stop trying to convince one another about some ideological stance, and start looking at caregivers’ real lives and building systems, services, products and policies that actually make them better. Or just decent. Even that would be a step... See more

This growing decline in familial support for raising children—and college-educated women becoming the lynchpin for knowledge work in America— meant that demand for paid family services has increased dramatically. In the 1990s and 2000s, this question of how to support working parents became another front in the culture war.

What we’re collectively facing is unbearable economic and social strain — the cracks are splintering and the time-bomb is ticking. In the darkest sense, ruin awaits: our population is aging, living longer, unable to afford healthcare, isn't saving, and required to work to survive in an environment where 1. they don’t have the digital prowess, and 2... See more

When we use the word in an economic sense, care is a bundle of services: feeding, dressing, bathing, toileting, and assisting. Robots could perform all of those functions; in countries such as Japan, sometimes they already do. But that work is best described as caretaking, comparable to what the caretaker of a property provides by watering a garden... See more

In the past few decades, child care has been the fastest-growing component of housework. Since the 1980s, American parents—and particularly college-educated mothers and fathers—have nearly doubled the amount of time they spend raising, teaching, driving, and helping their kids. The economist Valerie Ramey chalks it up to a “rug rat race” led by mid... See more

we all have needs that need to be tended to. I always wonder, what if care is the work? What if caring for ourselves is the revolution, meaning, what would happen if we divested from dismantling white supremacist capitalist patriarchy and invested our energy in equitizing the care we are able to provide one another?