This line of thinking is a pretty obvious patriarchal tent pole — but it also does a lot of work upholding the American cult of the individual (family). If someone needs help, if someone’s in crisis, if someone’s struggling, the solution to their struggle should always be to turn inward, not outward.

In her excellent book Forced to Care, Evelyn Nakano Glenn refers to this ongoing scenario as a care crisis. It’s not just that there isn’t enough care — it’s that those who end up providing it are coerced, in some form, to do so.

For so many people, this lack of options — this coercion to care — breeds intense resentment of a role that, when chosen of one’s own volition, might feel incredibly satisfying.

Even if 80% of adults still live within two hours of their parents, as of 2016, only one in five American families has a “stay-at-home” parent (an increasingly antiquated word to describe not working for pay). An estimated 16.8 percent of the population — 41.8 million people — currently provides care for adult over 50, a number that will only... See more

The experience is often so traumatic and exhausting that once they’re out of the thick of it, they don’t want anything to do with the ongoing struggle. There’s sympathy for others, but very little solidarity.

But an infrastructure of care is also about imagining — and enacting — more robust and informal communities of care.

our most venerated heroes are those who (ostensibly) “did it themselves,” even if they absolutely did it, whatever it is, with the invisibilized labor of women, or exploitative and racialized labor practices, or the benefits of familial wealth.

What we have, then, is a caregiving paradigm — not just for kids, but for elders and other adults — that relies heavily on proximity to family and presumed willingness. For those without those things, there are two options: 1) pay a lot of money for help, or 2) figure it out your damn self.

There’s coercion through kinship ties — aka, the person in need of care is my father, or my Aunt, or my kid, and it is my responsibility to provide it for them, even if I don’t particularly want to or am even able to.