Forced to Care

An expansive and inclusive care economy is one possible expression of an ethic of insecurity, and one that would require dismantling systems that produce and exploit vulnerability. Instead of profit-hungry recklessness, a care economy would proceed cautiously, taking care of people and the planet by doing less harm, and by seeking to repair the dam

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The system itself — which, like so many corners of the American labor market, still assumes the support of a partner that does not work full-time outside of the home. If you have that support, you will excel. If you don’t, you either have to make enough money to buy it, or you will (perhaps in slow motion, but inevitably) drown.

Sometimes I think about all this through the lens of a Virgin Mary portrait, of which we have all seen hundreds if not thousands. In the patriarchal fetishized version of valuing care, she stays there, locked up in a glossy painting, harmonious and unconflicted and silent. In my version of valuing care, we start with asking her if we can carry the ... See more