We Need a New Economic Category

Most essentially, it’s about treating child and elder care as infrastructure: absolutely essential to the health of society, and deserving of holistic reforms that treat it as such.

I want to drill down on one aspect of the intro, too, because I think it’s essential: how has care “curdled,” for lack of a better word, in our minds? And what have been the implications of that degradation?

Definitely curdled. When I say the word “care” I think it often brings to mind the smell of diapers or that unpleasant combo of urine and disi... See more

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

it doesn’t have to be this way. We can create infrastructures of care — on both a societal and community level.

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