Angela Garbes: Understanding Essential Labor
Author and journalist Angela Garbes, who in the first pages of her new book, Essential Labor, expands the concept of “mothering,” creates a tent for everyone, of any gender, who is engaged in the process of creation and care. That means everyone. A first-generation Filipino-American, Angela makes the argument that the United States must re-orient the way we think about everything—the economy, in particular—to venerate the vital act of care, of tending to each other’s needs, and of prioritizing the collective…otherwise we are lost.
In our conversation, we touch on what this means for all of our lives, including the ways that women like me must come out of our shame pockets to talk about all the people who care for us—labor that has become largely invisible behind the veneer of our projections of what it looks like to be a functioning family in America. As I explain to Angela, our family would cease to work without Vicky, who is effectively our third parent. I believe Angela is right, that we need to be having these collective conversations first, in order to push culture to reprioritize against a new axiom of what really matters in our lives.
MORE FROM ANGELA GARBES:
Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Chang
Like a Mother: A Feminist Journey Through the Science and Culture of Pregnancy
TRANSCRIPT:
(Edited slightly for clarity.)
ELISE LOEHNEN:
I loved your book just in the way that it puts essential—it's essential labor, right—it's this idea of it is essential. It is in many ways, life affirming. It's also exhausting. And it is labor, right? This idea of care that's often joyful, often not. An yet the most foundational pursuit of all of our lives, regardless of whether we have children or not.
ANGELA GARBES:
Thank you for saying that. I mean the book is primarily about caring for children, and ourselves, because that's the space that I occupy, and it was also written from the like depths of pandemic caregiving, which, well, it was a lot of things. Difficult and isolating and all of that stuff. But thank you. I like this framing because care is much more than just caring for children. Care is caring for ourselves, for other adults, our people, our elders, and really this is the work that is inescapable. Even if you have no dependents, even if you can Doordash or Instacart and have people shop for you,you still ultimately have to brush your teeth and wash your hair. And like that is really that's important. Like we talk about it as self-care, but before became…I think it is the only real work that humans have to do.
ELISE:
Well, and you think about DoorDash and you think about Instacart, and you think about someone tenderly, or not, picking out your produce. Those are all acts of care. And you know, you wrote “The pandemic revealed that mothering is some of the only truly essential work humans do. Without people to care for our children, we are lost. Writing about mothering right now is more consequential than ever.” But again, it's a bigger umbrella, right? This tending to life and all of its forms. No human is truly self-sufficient, and making that idea primary to the way that we think about life, rather than ancillary. or women's work. I know it feels critical and it felt particularly critical during the pandemic, but how do we keep that alive?
ANGELA:
Yeah. I mean, that's a great question. It's true. I wanna back up and say that I mean, this to me is basic, but it feels like we've drifted really far from it in our culture. That to be a human, the basic condition of being a human is being needful. You know, like we need air, we need housing, we need food, we need companionship. We need all of these things. And somehow in our culture, it feels like you're asking for too much, if you need things, right. You're supposed to be super self-sufficient. You're supposed to be able to like pull yourself up by your bootstraps. You're supposed to be able to like handle everything and it's just it's work. And it is it's too much for one person to do. Like you can't do it alone.
We just can't. And I really just, I want us to talk about that, you know, and we did see it, like you were saying, like in the pandemic. But we realized, you know, if you were, I love this, I love taking the conversation away from parenting, because this is care. Our mental health suffered because we couldn't be with people. And I don't think it's just that we need someone to help take care of us. We as humans, I really think it it's one of the most beautiful human things is we are, we want to take care of other people. You know what I mean? Like I, I really believe that.
ELISE:
We create and affirm life. That's what it means to be human. And even like you just said, pulling yourselves up from your bootstraps. What I love about that saying is that it was, and I don't remember like the mythology or the roots of that phrase, but it's an impossibility. You can't pull yourself up. You can't pull yourself up by pulling on your boots. If that makes sense.
It was like written, it was like intended, not as a joke, but as like a fallacy, and yet it's become this primary mythology of becoming self-made, which just like underlines the fallacy.
ANGELA:
No, I really appreciate that. Cause I use that phrase and I was like, I don't know what it means.
ELISE:
But it’s supposed to be absurd.
ANGELA:
Yeah. We've based so many things on like myth, or like a misunderstanding. Like you know, earlier we were talking about going to pick up our kids and I think about how so much of family life is based on this myth like we have outpaced. Like if we stop and question, there's so many things that we just sort of take for granted, but our culture, school's getting out at 2:30 or 3:)), built on the idea that there's someone to pick them up. There's someone at home, and there's someone who goes out and works professionally. And then that work is more valuable than care work, and the other things. But we live under these conditions that don't make sense. Like they don't make sense for people.
ELISE:
No. And speaking of phrases that are inherently absurd, you write, “I reject the American idea of ‘earning a living.’ I am alive and I don't need to do anything to earn my existence. We don't have to prove that we are worth worthy of comfort, ease, pleasure, or satisfaction. I don’t need a job to contribute something to my community. I just need to be me.” And that phrase, earning a living.
ANGELA:
WTF is what I say to that. I mean, it's really like, I am alive. Thanks to like my mother's labor. I have like earned quote unquote, my living. I don't need to earn it. I have it.
And we really, I thinkit feels to me that a lot of people in America are threatened or scared by this idea that simply by being born, simply being a human being, we are born deserving. And I'm talking about deserving basic human rights, which we do not guarantee in this country. Like health, healthcare, a place to live, right. Time to spend with family. Like those are really that's it. Like, we don't have a good guaranteed like floor for life. And so I think people really feel like, people who are fortunate, privileged to have some sort of comfort, I feel like it's really important to them. I feel like we associate wealth with this idea that like, we've done something to earn this. The truth is a lot of people who are wealthy, it's generational wealth.
That's not everyone, but that's definitely the case in America. And we built American wealth because we had slavery. So a lot of that was done by other people while the wealth was accumulated by others. And I think like that idea of sharing resources, comfort, and power, it's hard. I think that a lot of people at this point understand there are systemic problems that led to the inequality in our country. But I think we're sort of at this place where it would be like, well, what do we, how do we, what do we do about that? And I think, I don't know, but I feel like people have to really sort of confront that, like to give everyone a decent life and it can be a simple life. It doesn't have to be extravagant. But we will have to share some things, and we'll have to figure out some new ways of being in community with people. We have to undo a lot of myths and things that we have been told, and maybe things that we've never really questioned, and things that we just take for granted. There's a lot of stuff that we just don't…I just want us to think more deeply about this idea of who's deserving and who deserves what.
ELISE:
And the qualities of a good life are, and what all of this accrual of wealth gets or doesn't.
ANGELA:
To that, and this is something that I've been thinking about. I guess the people that I want to be around, that I wanna be in community with, I think the people who listen to your podcast, I really believe that if you were to ask someone, what are the best, most important and most valuable things in your life, most people would not say things that were purchased. Like most people would talk about relationships, love, things that actually are, in terms of money, unquantifiable. So you're accruing a lot of wealth, which is for people who want that, and they get to have the things that they want, but really like for most people, I really think things that make life worth living are not things.
ELISE:
I think that’s the difference between worth and value, too. You know, you could be worth a lot of money and yet not have a lot of things that have value to you, that you would miss in a fire. And I mean, there's a reason, like that when people evacuate, I mean, I live in California, so I think about evacuating forest fires all the time, but there are reasons that you are like, oh, throw in my passports and some photos, my kids, and my pets at the end of the day. All of this stuff doesn't guard against life.
ANGELA:
You’re not packing Alexa!
ELISE:
No, but I think we live, you know, as you were saying, America's amazing and I'm grateful to live here, and for my life, and yet, there is a lot of cruelty baked into our culture. We're a country with no social net, no guaranteed basic income. As you mentioned, no guarantee of healthcare, a lot of basic, essential, elements of care that make any fall feel far less precipitous. There's no net. And so I think it also stokes so much fear, even when you have a lot, this idea that you’re one job loss away from calamity. It's very cruel. It's very cruel. And I think that if we had a moreequalized culture, we had a far less extreme wealth disparity, which is only getting worse every day, particularly in the pandemic. I mean, it's wild, it's wild. What's happening. When you look at someone like Jeff Bezos, and then you think about the average Amazon worker.
ANGELA:
I mean, I feel like this is the right place to mention, you know, that poverty is a human-created condition. And I think that it's built on this idea, it perpetuates this idea that some people are more worthy than others, or the work they do is more important. But like we created a system in which people are poor and don't have a standard of living, and then we make it so that to get benefits and assistance, you have to jump through a lot of hoops and administrative forms, and it's really hard to get out of poverty. And we could just…it could go away, like Jeff Bezos could eliminate poverty if he wanted to. Like we could do it if we directed our funds in different ways, you know. That wealth gap is just so astounding to me.
And I also think it's built on this idea of scarcity. And this is where I think a lot of people, a lot of people that I'm trying to talk to with this book, I assume good intent. I think a lot of people want to figure out ways to be better, to be more a part of a community, to raise children who value other people. Who like a more equitable society. But there is this idea of scarcity that's baked into American culture where it's like, I have to, because there's no social safety net, I have to hoard whatever resources I have. And I think a lot about when people talk, my kids are in public school, and the way I explain it to them is, you know, what's good enough for our neighbor is good enough for you.
Like public school is a really cool thing that everyone's paying for. But we know that it's underfundedm and there are problems within it. And so I think it in parenting, because everyone wants what's best for their child. Like I relate to that so deeply. I understand that. But I think the idea of what's best, we've drifted from the idea that what's best, is what's best for everyone and including the people who need the most resources and who need the most assistance. And so I hear people talk about, you know, like we're gonna send our to private school because they just need like a little more attention. We need like smaller classroom sizes. And I get it. That's the thing is like, I understand that so much. Like I want my child to have like every advantage, but like when you pull out of those things, then it weakens that public resource to, you know what I mean?
ELISE:
I do, although I think it's extra-complicated. I don't know how it is in Seattle. I think it becomes extra-complicated because not only is there a disparity between public and private school, but then within the public school system, there's extreme disparity and inequity between different public schools and they're not funded equally. I live in the west side of LA, which is wealthier and our public school is a 10 school. And if there's a lot beyond it being well funded by our neighborhood, there's a lot of extra funding that goes into the school for our extra teachers aids. And that's all great, but because of its 10 school status, it's like aggressively competitive. And I mean, it's too aggressive. Our kids go to private school because it like crushed my son's soul. He couldn't keep up, like he couldn't as a kindergartner. He was falling behind by week six.
ANGELA:
I'm so glad to be having this conversation with you because I also like, I understand, you know what I mean? Like, I feel all of these things and it is really complicated. But also like again, I'm just glad to be talking about it because we can't, I don't know. I, I feel like it's, we're, you know, we always talk about like, our country is so divided. Like, and it feels like you have to be this or that. Like there's no nuance to it, you know?
No, you know, I mean, I get that and it's like, when you see it affect your child, like you are like, no, I want to do what's best for them. Because also the way the systems are set up, because while I believe public school is, I mean, public education is a wonderful thing. It's not funded equally. Like you said, and I mean, I am like making this choice. Because for me, I live in a particularly diverse neighborhood and for me, it's not just about book stuff, but I also feel like I have, I happen to have a seven-year-old who's kind of a nerd, you know what I mean? Like, so I don't, I worry less about her academically and what I see. Like she's getting a great education, but what I also see is that, you know, the school translates all of the materials into eight core languages. Like, I see that she's developing life skills or this idea of analyzing, she has people in the neighborhood, like there are other aspects to it. And people have different priorities and that's fine. That's great. Like everyone is different and the system makes it so that it's, it's very hard. You know what I mean? Like you believe in it, but it is when the rubber meets the road, the system is so imperfect.
ELISE:
I completely hear you. And then this is the other ironic twist, not to like get into the, but based on where we live, and how segregated Los Angeles is, our public school is very affluent and very white. And so he has a more, diverse—socioeconomically and racially—experience at the school that he's at, by a fairly significant margin. I know it all seems really backward. But I'm also glad we're talking about it because I feel like so many of these things become there's so much shame. And it becomes, you write at the beginning and this is in the context of your mom, but then you get into this idea of care and this country too, and how it's paid for, and largely invisible you. “One of the luxuries of my childhood was to remain oblivious to all of the work that went into raising me.” And then we think about the childcare industry and the healthcare industry, which is predominantly, women of color, Latino women.
ANGELA:
And black, black women and Asian women. Very much brown and black women.
ELISE:
And it becomes this unspoken, invisible labor, where no one is acknowledging what's required. Or maybe required is not the right word, but like what is involved and in a way that needs to be much more visible, and much more obviously compensated.
ANGELA:
Yeah. And this is, I mean, one of the things that this is where this, so when I think about that shame, I always think about who benefits. So shame like grows and thrives in silence, right? Like that's really where a lot of it is internal and private. And I think about that as who benefits from shame. It's not us personally, right. It's something bigger, it's systems of power. I've been asking questions about nannies, and someone has told me, like, I actually feel like kind of guilty. Like, I don't wanna talk about it. I feel super bougie having a nanny. This system is not set up really for anyone to do well, like you before a child is six, like you are entirely on your own to figure out childcare.
That is a systemic failing. And so, I don't blame people who have more resources for using those resources. What I want is like, we should be expecting more from our society, from our government. And I think we have to talk about these things because we perceive them as individual things, but it's not on one person who hires a nanny to solve how we do all of those things. But I do think it is their responsibility to talk about, I have a nanny cuz I need help. Maybe I'm assuming again, I always assume good intent. Like I wanna pay them more, but that's not what other people pay them. And also it's expensive for us. But those kinds of things, like how we value care, and how all those things in like the education system, like these are, it's hard, it's complicated.
It is slow, but we have to talk about it. We have to talk about, we haven't been talking about it, and it hasn't gotten better. Like nothing's changing, you know? And so, and I also believe like I'm not gonna like bend the world. I'm not gonna be able to like completely, you know revolutionize our healthcare system, or how we pay mothers or domestic workers better. But I also really believe that just talking about it is the first step, you know? Like we have so much more in common, than we have in part, I think it's really, that sounds so Pollyanna and like idealistic, but…
ELISE:
But it's true. No a friend of mine was living…a graduate student. She was living in France and she was like, the daycare there is exquisite. These are these Sorbonne trained childcare workers. It was like $8 an hour, something that was intentionally affordable for families, all families, and this enriching, amazing experience. Because it's perceived as a very honorable and necessary public good.
ANGELA:
Because it is. We know this. Like data shows that investing in children, and investing in family health at an early age, like that has real public health benefits that pays dividends down the road. So I don't know why we are not investing in that.
ELISE:
Well, it’s another grand mythology that we're supposed to be in these nuclear families, and that we're supposed to somehow, I mean, as you mentioned, I live in a throuple. A sexless throuple.
ANGELA:
I didn't know that.
ELISE:
No, I’m kidding. I'm in a very normal, heterosexual marriage, but Vicky has been with her family since my oldest was two months old. Right before I went back to the office. And no, I'm not in a throuple, but we have a third parent. She's family at this point. And not only would my kids not survive or thrive, I would die without her. I can't imagine. I mean, like to not to know that there's not a tripod supporting our family, we don't have any family here. And even when in the pandemic, when you were writing about your pod, and bringing each other food, and this idea that you know, that there are 10 adults who can discipline your children, who can look out for them, that is not the reality in America anymore. And it hasn't been probably since our neolithic allo-parenting heritage, where children were raised communally and we helped each other out.
ANGELA:
Yeah. I mean, it is not how it's been. If the pandemic has made me hopeful about something, it is that we have seen people pod up. I actually hate the term pod, but you know, it's people
ELISE:
Pod up. It's a very Invasion of the Body Snatchers to me.
ANGELA:
Yeah. But people like came together, you know, a good friend of mine in New York, like she had a quote unquote pod with a family that, their economic situations were very different. And she was like, would we be friends under normal circumstances? She was like, I don't know. But I like them, and our children get along so well, they went on a vacation together. That sort of forced people together in different ways. And it made it very clear, like we can't do this alone. Like exactly what you were saying. Two parents actually is not enough. My husband and I are not enough. We're lucky because my parents live close by. I think a lot of us have leaned into community in a way that is not necessarily what we were expecting.
And I'd love to see more of that. Like we just had our, I call them our co-family. We had them over for dinner last night. And we were like, I feel like we haven't seen each other in like over two weeks. And as things open up and as we start doing different things, I don't wanna stop seeing them. Like I still wanna have dinner with them, you know? And I feel like that's a thing that I'd like us to lean into, you know, to get to know people. Like a pandemic made us reach out to people who maybe we wouldn't have reached out to before to get closer to them. Oh, I see you, and totally understand you as a creative person or what you're doing, like with your life's work.
But I know you're a person who needs help. Right. And you know, it's actually not that big a deal to add one more kid to my afternoon. I'm already watching two, you know? And I think that's one of the ways that we can counteract this nuclear family stuff. Cause I've just seen it. This is how people have been doing it. Like we've heard about people talking about mutual aid. I don't know if you have these in LA we have these things called little free libraries where
ELISE:
The little libraries on the sidewalks?
ANGELA:
I think that there's more little free libraries in my neighborhood than actually we need. But there's been so many of those because I think, again, it's that human urge where it's like, I wanna do something, I wanna share. And like, books are a great way to do that. And there's like, children's toys. We have a community fridge, like down the road from us now. And all of that stuff is how people have been surviving all along. Like people who have been living in poverty, people who have had limited resources, marginalized people, like they've always been making community, you know, like we've always been making community in different ways. And this is a great opportunity to like expand our ideas of that and people with privilege. I think it's an opportunity to be like, oh here's other ways of doing this.
ELISE:
This obviously predates the pandemic, but you think about this structure of the government that we've come to rely on for all of these things. Failing that, we rely on our employers, which is also the pandemic showed, maybe not so wise to structure our healthcare through an at-will employment agreement.
ANGELA:
And again, that's like a human right that we have tied to work. So you have to work to prove that you deserve basic healthcare.
ELISE:
Right. And then caregivers are the largest workforce with no workplace.
ANGELA:
I mean, maybe we should start talking about how the home is a workplace. You know that to be true.
ELISE:
This is my office. Welcome. And then you get into this idea of like, GoFundme, you know, there is this desire, GoFundme being one example, or this need of like, you have a need? State the need and I will help you meet the need. And in some ways it's perverse because how is this, how are we here? When we're supposed to be so much better than this. And yet at the same time, it's so affirming to recognize that someone can put out a need. And obviously it's not a perfect system. But that people do want to meet needs.
ANGELA:
Yeah. People want to, that's the thing, that's what's so beautiful. And I think that's what frustrates me about our institutions, because care is again for, I think for the 15th time, it is a natural human inclination. I think it's a value. It it's built into us. The need for it, and the desire to give it, or the obligation to give it. It's inescapable. We do it. But the problem that I have with our institutions is that care is not part of them. That's not built into them. That's what they're lacking. Like we don't have institutions that actually want to take care of people. That's what comes clear to me, you know? Yeah. And I think there are people working within it who wanna figure out ways to do that. But at heart it's really hard, right. To like, think about just to get like the ACA done.
That was like a real fight. I mean I am so grateful that we have a different administration now, but I do feel sort of disappointed in it. But because we were talking about paid leave, we were talking about, you know, care as infrastructure. We were talking about all of these things. And then when they were debating, when Congress was, you know, trying to hammer out the American Rescue Plan, I saw like Democrats who have a majority be like, oh, okay, we'll take paid leave off the table. And I was like, wait a second, wait a second, wait a second. Like, I was seeing people be like, care has to be part of our governmental system. We want to bring care into this. But then when it became hard, it was like going away, you know, like, yeah.
I don't think those things should be negotiable and I don't have the answers. I don't wanna like talk in circles. I don't know exactly how we do this. I know that there are people and I'm so grateful for advocates who are fighting for that. I feel like we need people at every level. Like I'm here, we're here talking about right. But the other thing, like day to day where this lives is, what you're saying, what we've been talking about is people take care of each other. That's like how it gets done on a day-to-day basis. And how do we get more people involved in that? How do we expand that absence of it coming from, you know, I don't wanna say top-down, but you know, government.
ELISE:
Yeah. And how do we restructure our society so care is in the middle, and how do we start to quantify and appropriately value, these priceless activities that are currently either unpaid, or very, very poorly paid in our culture. And I mean, you think, and we all saw this, it was a cultural awakening in our recognition of essential workers in the pandemic. When people were literally, and you talk about sort of the Filipina nurses dying at wildly disproportionate rates. They’re 4% of the nursing, and 34% of deaths. Is that right?
ANGELA:
Yes. Yes. Thank you. Thank you for knowing that statistic and bringing it up, because my mom is a nurse. She's retired now, but that hit me so hard. I mean, it hit me of course, that black and brown people were dying at a higher rate, you know of COVID in those early days. But I saw that and I was like, even in this profession, I mean, nurses are caregivers, but in this professionalized setting, you know, Filipino nurses were working in ICU units, and ICU units and critical care because, you know, years ago that stuff is like way more intimate with patients, like that kind of work. And they were jobs that white nurses like preferred not to have. And so Filipino nurses took those jobs. And to me, it was just like, it hit home so personal or it just felt like, oh, even in these professional essential workers, we value these brown lives less. And that was really hard. It was a really hard truth to confront. It was like a thing of like, I guess I have sort of always known this, but I'm privileged enough for it to feel sort of theoretical. It made it so real. And that's why in the book, I didn't set out to, you know, like write my family's immigration story, but t's kind of what set me on the journey for having that element of the book.
ELISE:
I think that's a staggering statistic, and we know, we know that we saw this, right? Like we were home captive, but the people out in the world who were keeping us fed, keeping produce coming out of the ground, collecting our garbage…
ANGELA:
Processing the chickens…
ELISE:
Processing the chickens. Like these are people who kept us alive, all of us collectively beyond the mothering of children. But again, bringing that mothering out to this bigger idea that's not attached to a gender. And it seemed hopeful, and maybe it can continue to be hopeful of this mass recognition of these are the people, this person, this garbage man is far more important to my daily life and survival and health, than the CEO of the tech search company who lives down the street. But how backwards we are. And I just don't think it would be that difficult to re-engineer our society. It's not saying that we don't need markets, or that we don't need financial structures and systems, or that they need to be wholesale reinvented. They just need to be re-plumbed and reprioritized, according to what's essential. And then, you know, we haven't even talked about the planet, but for on all of us to matter, our mother.
ANGELA:
Yes! I mean, I love that this is an expansive conversation around the concept of mothering, which is really what I wanna do is like grow that to think about care work. nd yes, like we can still, I mean, my personal preference would be to do away with capitalism and have socialist feminism, but that's just me, I'll admit that.
ELISE:
We definitely need a little bit more socialism, I'm with you.
ANGELA:
But I do think like to have to have those essential workers that we're talking about, you know, the people who are processing our food, who were also dying of COVID, and we're not allowed to take time off, to keep our food supply going. To lift those people up so that they could have, you know, worker’s rights, and a living wage, and protections, and healthcare. It does not mean that we don't have tech CEOs. It does not mean that like people could be as ambitious, as professionally minded, like there would still be plenty of wealth to go around. Then that's what I, to go back to that idea of just sort of sharing there would just be a little less, you know. But like sometimes my husband and I play this game where we're like, if we had a lot of money, what would we spend it on? Like, and after a certain point, it's just like…I guess you make a rocket to space.
It feels like there's still so much, there would still be so much for people, and they would still get to live the lives they wanted to live. It's really about just believing that everyone is entitled to a nice, simple life, you know, where they don't have to choose between paying rent and, you know, getting their child's insulin. Like it's very, it's inhumane. That's how I think of it. It's inhumane the way that we live.
ELISE:
No, I'm with you. And I mean the distortion of needing to go to space right now is so wild, and it's so meta, like thinking about the Elon Musks of the world and his fascination with AI, and to me, he seems like also someone who clearly thinks that in many, I mean, money is just energy. It's just ones and zeros. And we made it up. It doesn't actually provide safety or security. Certainly not from a virus. I mean, in some ways you're protected because you don't have to leave your house, but you can die.
ANGELA:
You can die. I mean, anyone can, and the pandemic is still going on. I remember having this conversation with my husband at the beginning of the year was when Omicron was happening. And after like winter break, I didn't wanna send our preschooler to preschool for the first week. I was like, if she's gonna get it, this is like, when she would get it right. Everyone's coming back from winter break, they're supposed to quarantine. And I don't really think everyone's gonna do that. And he just said, I don't know if that's necessary. You know, he was likeand also if she gets it, it would probably be mild, you know, because she's a child, but she's unvaccinated. And I just had this moment with him where I was like, are you listening to yourself?
I was like, first of all, I think that's kind of ableist, right? Because someone could get sick and like mild or not like, but what's mild for some person could be devastating for somebody else. And I just said to him, I was like, I don't want her to get it at all. You know what I mean? Like she could, we don't know what's gonna happen. There's so much that we don't know. And we are all so vulnerable still. And that's a, I mean, I don't mean to like sort of a bit of a digresision, but this idea though, that like, it really did for me, I've taken it so to heart that we are all so vulnerable at all times, especially for a virus that we really don't know that much about. And that keeps changing. I do feel like we're on a better side of it. I think that things will, I'm hopeful for the first time in a long time. But, um, but yeah, it's still, I mean that vulnerability, I don't want it to be a thing that we fear, but we are all vulnerable.
ELISE:
This is life, in order to become anything vulnerability is required. It's required of every living thing. Like a seedling, a baby. And going back to this idea of mothering, to the recognition of that, and the care that's required of that vulnerability to get it to sturdy your life, where it in turn can do that for someone else or the next generation. Absent that, we're lost.
ANGELA:
Yeah. I mean, without a doubt. That vulnerability is a place where we can see, I think, two important things. One, interdependence. I think about people who are like, why should I pay for when someone goes on maternity, like I have to do that work. Or like, why should we have to pay for like kids to like have healthcare or something? And that mentality to me is like, were you not a child? Like, do you not have a parent? Like you have benefited from care. And so I think pointing that out and saying to people, you know, and also when you get old, like someone's gonna have to care for you. If you get sick. Vulnerability is not a bad thing. And it also shows us that interdependence. And then I think I lost my second thought about vulnerability.
ELISE:
Family leave is for all leave. It's for all care taking. And obviously it's for children and babies, and maternity and paternity leave, but it's also for aging parents or a partner who might get cancer and you might need to take time off.
ANGELA:
Or like be in an accident. Or any of the many things that like could befall us, or like you get long COVID, you know, like there's at some point everyone, or people that you love are going to need care. We're not invincible. That's why I love the expanded family leave in every way. Bereavement. Like it's all of that stuff. Like we need to be able to take time and take care.
ELISE:
And there are obviously interesting human resources, human services approaches to things like making maternity leave equitable for others who might choose otherhood in a way that I think is also very compelling. And it goes to this idea that we all also need self-care, we need sabbaticals, we need moments of creative incubation. And to normalize that. Sure you might be a 55-year-old gay man who has chosen that he doesn't wanna be a dad, but maybe you need like, that let's call it nine weeks of time to tend to your other passions. We could create a much more interesting work experience if we could just soften. Like just soften a little bit for humanity.
ANGELA:
And then think about, you know, when that person comes back, the sort of perspective that they have, like the creativity they've been able to endure the, like the energy that they can bring. It's like investing in people is, I think what a lot of this is about is really investing in people and nurturing them in various ways at various stages in life, because we don't even really know fully, like, what happens when we do that in my, is that it would be beneficial.
ELISE:
And just, I think it would be beneficial for all of us to acknowledge openly and without shame how much we need other people, how much we need care, how dependent we are, and other people for services, and to stop hiding thatm and to start venerating that. And make it a social good. I mean, that’s not the right word.
ANGELA:
I love that you just said venerate. This is honorable work, you know? It's all necessary. And I think thatthis idea of some work being unskilled is to me another myth that's used to say that we should pay some people less than we pay others. You know, work is work. And since we all have to work right in this country, it shouldn't be a threat. It’s not like it takes away from your skills. It's just understanding that every job has different things that are required of it, you know, and to be good at a job, and to be able to do things requires some mastery and understanding. And all of it is good and all of it is worthy and all of it is important.
ELISE:
Totally. I mean, I think about Vicky and I think about, you know, she's a grandmother.
ANGELA:
I was gonna ask, does Vicky have children?
ELISE:
Yeah, she has grown kids. She has grandkids. And she lives about an hour and a half away. Her husband is about an hour and a half away in Riverside. And so she lives with us during the week. And then she leaves at lunchtime on Friday and comes at lunchtime on Monday. And I think about this a lot, like, what would it feel like if Vicky was with us, and had her own kids? So we've been saved from a lot of those uncomfortable…but she needs to work. She's part of a two family income, sorry, two income family, the same way that my husband and I both work. We’re a two income family. I love and venerate her and we pay her effectively, my husband's salary, post-tax salary a little bit above that. And we pay for her and her husband's benefits fully.
ANGELA:
Does she get paid time off and like vacation, thank you for being so people are not upfront about this stuff.
ELISE:
She gets paid time off. We pay her whenever we're away, we pay her fully. She goes to see her mom in Guatemala for two weeks a year, paid. She probably gets six weeks paid off. It's funny. I mean, we're not great at counting hours we just pay. It’s funny, Max, my oldest was like talking about how much he loved Vicki. And he was like, “and I know we pay her” but he was trying to essentially articulate, he's eight. And he was like, trying to articulate this idea of like, would she still love me even if we didn't pay her? It was really like, really interesting conversation. I was like, I think Vicky will always love you and always be part of your life, and would be in your life if she weren't paid. But it's an honor to pay her.
ANGELA:
God, I love this. I mean, these are the conversations that we really needs to be having. Where it is, how do you, I'm so glad that you're in this position to do this, and that you value it, you know, that it's important to you to pay her? You have to decide those things, and like that's not the standard, you know? But I think there are a lot of people who would like to do those things, but maybe they just don't even, know that's a thing that they could do. They could do it like, and one of the, like one of the things I've been saying, people are like, what are actionable steps? And I've been like, if you have the ability to give your nanny or housekeeper a raise, do it, do it.
It makes a huge material difference. And I also think like that idea of what Max is talking about is another hugely important part of it, which is that domestic workers. Yes, there's the economic transactional part of it, but like you're not good at your job. And Vicky would not be with you for this long if there wasn't real affection, real knowledge. And again, that's harder to quantify, but this is skilled work. Like these people are professionals, you know, they are good at what they do, and they love, and they give, and they do it every day, you know, despite what's going on in their lives, despite how they might miss their husband, you know, like it is. So this idea that it is unskilled, it makes me so angry.
ELISE:
No, I'm with you. I mean, she's gifted in ways, well beyond the ways that I am, and she in turn enables me to be able to write, and do my work, and hopefully in a way that feels appropriately reciprocal. I mean, I would buy her a house if I could, I would do anything for her. She hung the stars and the moon in my eyes. She's kind of the center of our family actually.
ANGELA:
I love that. I mean, I actually, when you were like, I'm in a sexless throuple, I was like, oh, I mean, I have a friend who's like now in a throuple. And I was like, oh, I want to talk more about this, but I mean, I love it. Where is this idea too? Where it's like, there is enough love to around, there's enough work to be done. You know what I mean? That it works better, like in this arrangement. And I think people should, I just love that. It is again like that interdependence that we have are so locked into a certain way of thinking. And then we feel ashamed if we like stray from that or to do a other things. But it requires imagination and creativity. It requires time and investment in getting to know someone. And that's how you community build. Like there's no one simple answer. It's inefficient, it's slow, that relationship building it's the most important stuff, but it doesn't just happen. Like you really have to invest as we've been saying, like investing in people, fully investing in their humanity.
ELISE:
And the exchange of love. I mean, it feels good. It's what we're here for.
ANGELA:
It's the best feeling.
ELISE:
I’ve been thinking a lot about this conversation, and this idea of needfulness being the most essential quality of our humanity. And the interdependence that comes from that. I don’t know if I overshared in terms of my relationship with Vicky, but I just wanted to reiterate that it’s been one of the most important relationships in my life. Both teaching me how to allow and accept support, and also the priceless nature of watching someone else love and accept your children. There is no way I will ever be able to appropriately compensate her for what she has given our family, and specifically me. I would not feel so comfortable working and writing if it were not for her anchoring support. I’m sure some of you are doing the math, too, and wondering why Rob doesn’t just stop working and be a stay-at-home dad. Because it theoretically makes economic sense. But he values his work, and he provides insurance for our family, and then we wouldn’t have Vicky. We would be so much poorer without her presence in our lives. She enables both of us to be better parents. It’s also worth underlining that we are in a very privileged position to be able to afford support, and I think that’s the point. We all deserve help raising our children. Your children are my children, too. They belong to all of us. I hold a prayer that here in America we will come to some sort of sense, and start properly compensating childcare workers, teachers, and supporting parents who need those services, and need them to be deeply and profoundly affordable. There are ways to bridge that gap. And incidentally, it’s all parents who need that.