Your husband discussing standing up/lying down type sex/penises with your daughter was so honest, hilarious, and personal. I was struck though by your speculation of your mother’s childbirth issues. JRR: You are probably quite accustomed to writing about intimacies after your first book. It made the devaluation of care work done by women of color-the very lives of women of color-undeniable.

JR Ramakrishnan: What was the biggest insight (or most stunning/shocking fact) you came upon in the research of this book? The one I was taken with was the salary of 300K you’d have for care-taking of your family.Īngela Garbes: The statistic that will stay with me forever-the one that clarified my vision for this book and the need to include my own Filipino American family’s story-is this: Filipinx nurses are 4% of the nursing workforce in America but account for 34% of nursing deaths from Covid. I spoke to Garbes about intimacies, how her mother (and her daughters in the future might see) reads her work, and the sustaining the hope behind her manifesto. She urges for a view of mothering as a radical path towards social change, as well as for universal income for caregivers, in the lineage of the campaign of the National Welfare Rights Organization led by Johnnie Tillmon and other Black activists. Garbes reflects on the nature and current state of caregiving via her Filipino American family, and the caretaking work done by the Filipinx diaspora around the world, and her personal and communal experience of mothering. The figure for the entire world was $10.9 trillion dollars. only, women would have earned (at minimum wage) $1.5 trillion dollars for the unpaid care work done in 2019. This number from Oxfam is especially stunning: in the U.S.

The pandemic revealed that mothering is some of the only truly essential work humans do.” The paid (and unpaid) work of caregiving, mostly performed by Black and Brown women, however, is horrifically undervalued when it is paid for. Her definition of mother is not constricted by those who birth children, nor by gender, but rather more expansively and beautifully focuses on the caring of children as the act of “mothering.” She writes that raising children “is a social responsibility, one that requires robust community support.

Angela garbes essential labor