Who Cares About the "Care Economy"?

Sarah Jones: Hi, everybody. Welcome to America Who Hurt You, the pod where we talk in many voices about politics, our trauma, and how we can heal them both. I’m your host, Sarah Jones, and I’ll be joined by a few co hosts, Rashid,

Rashid: What’s good, y’all?

Sarah Jones: Nereida

Nereida: Hola everybody.

Sarah Jones: Lorraine,

Lorraine: Hello there.

Sarah Jones: and Bella.

Bella: Hi guys.

Sarah Jones Scarlett: And as you know, they’re not quite co-hosts, they’re my characters from my one person shows and my movie, Sell/Buy/Date, who like to talk to my guests. 

Speaking of, today’s guest is my friend Ai jen Pooh. She’s here to talk to us about the care economy, which apparently the whole country is a part of, even though most of us have never even heard of it.

Rashid: Hold up, the care economy? That mean like, do I care about economics and money and whatnot, right? I mean, yeah, I’m all about the care economy.

Sarah Jones Scarlett: No, Rashid, well, money is in there, but it’s actually more about people and jobs,

Sarah Jones: Even though most of the jobs associated with the care economy, including childcare work, housekeeping, elder care, they don’t get the respect they deserve in general, much less acknowledgment for their huge contribution to our economy. That’s actually why I wanted to introduce a special guest cohost for this episode. Or you wanna introduce your self Miss Lady.?

Miss Lady: Hi everybody, y’all could call me Miss Lady. I’m not gon’ give y’all my goverment name since i don’t know who out there in the podcast internet. And I know i don’t sound like no fancy co-host or whatever but that don’t mean i don’t have something to say. So a liitle bit about me–I’m from the south and I been around a long time. And I did work in folks’ homes taking care of children and the whole family since tback when that job was called a “domestic” and for sure before anybody was talkin about this “care economy.” So i wanna hear what ya’ll got to say.

Sarah Jones: Thank you Miss Lady, i appreciate you, and especially that you can add some first hand experience of the history of care, but most people don’t realize they’re interacting with the care economy every day. Actually, let me ask all of you this. When I say domestic workers, nannies, or home care workers, what do you think of?

Nereida: I think it’s complicated…on the one hand it makes me proud because I think of how hard my mom worked when she was a home health aid, but on the on the other hand it’s frustrating because people don’t see those jobs as like deserving respect, and growing up sometimes I felt embarrassed that I had a lot of caregivers and cleaners in my family. 

Bella: Well, now this feels problematic or whatever, but I actually had a nanny growing up and she was like my second mom. I loved her so much. I just, I do remember that like, she was with us so much of the time , I kind of felt guilty that like she wasn’t with her own kids.

Nereida: No shade, Bella, but oh yeah, she probably didn’t get to see her kids. And it shouldn’t be like that–you shouldn’t have to miss out on your own life just because you’re supporting someone else’s Plus, it can be super stressful that you, not only are you working so hard, but like you have someone’s wellbeing, or even their whole life in your hands , and yet you’re so underpaid.

Sarah Jones: Oof, that part. Lorraine, what about you?

Lorraine: Well, I never was a domestic myself. I mean, unless you count my own house. That’s what you did back then. You know, women, we had to take care of the kids, the house, the cleaning, everything. But it wasn’t like it was a real job.

Sarah Jones Scarlett: Well, the care economy would disagree with that, Lorraine. 

It is very much a real job and it still falls mostly to women, whether they’re unpaid family caregivers or underpaid workers. 

Miss Lady: I know that’s right!

Sarah Jones Scarlett: and Ai jen Poo is helping the country see all the parts of the care economy in a revolutionary new way. This is the weirdest thing because what I really want to do is talk to you and ask you how you’re doing as  your friend. Yay. But I want everyone else to get to know you. So Ai jen Poo is a next generation labor leader. She’s the author of The Age of Dignity, Preparing for an Elder Boom in a Changing America, which hi, we are it.

Ai-jen Poo: She’s also a MacArthur Genius Fellow. She’s the co founder and president of the National Domestic Workers Alliance. as well as co founder and executive director of Caring Across Generations, which is a phenomenal organization. Hi thank you for having me, Sarah.

Sarah Jones: I have had the great fortune to work with Caring Across Generations and learn about the care economy that you have helped people, you know, really start to understand the value of this in our country.

For people who are like, wait, care economy, what, what now? 

Ai-jen Poo: Well basically it’s this part of our lives and our economy that is almost like, if you think about a tip of the iceberg, the care economy is basically all the activity that happens in our families and our homes in our communities that makes life possible and therefore powers everything else in our economy.

And that’s like, the aging care that allows for our elders to live with dignity. It’s the support for people with disabilities that allows for them to live whole full lives. It’s The childcare that enables the potential of our children to grow.

 There’s so much research now about that period of our lives from zero to three and how much our brains are forming and how much is of our kind of pathways and potential for the future are set during those times.

And what our child care workers and our nannies and our early childhood educators do is they set us up for. The, the ability to realize our full potential in the world, um, to be able to think critically to imagine to dream, um, to create and those. People, those relationships are so valuable and there’s so much skill, emotional intelligence, actual hard skills, so much capacity, um, that goes into providing care.

Sarah Jones: Mm hmm. Yep.

Ai-jen Poo:  So it’s everyone who does it as a profession. Who provides care as a profession, it includes child care workers, nannies, um, early childhood educators. It includes all the direct care workers who get up every day and make sure that people who are in nursing homes or assisted living facilities have the care they need or the home care workers who make sure that older adults and people with disabilities who are trying to live life independently in their communities have what they need.

It’s all of the care, the supports that meet our basic human needs living on this earth from birth.

To death, it’s called the care economy, because it really does have this economic value that is often unmeasured. But it’s why we call it the work that makes all of their work possible.

Sarah Jones Laptop: I love that. This is the work that makes all other work possible. 

And that’s a MASSIVE contribution to our economy, but what I’ve learned from you is that so much of it isn’t measured because the care economy is more than just paid, professional careworkers. It also includes unpaid caregivers, like family members. Can you speak to that a little bit?

Sarah Jones Scarlett:  literally 6, 000, 000 of us are caring for loved ones with Alzheimer’s or another form of dementia. 11, 000, 000 of us are sandwich generation family caregivers who are caring for young children and aging loved ones at the same time Ah ok, Sandwich generation meaning we’re like, sandwiched in between, having to care for both, right, it’s the intergenerational piece you’ve spoken about 

Ai-jen Poo:  I was personally raised in an intergenerational household. All of my grandparents were involved in, in raising me, my parents, my mother, and every single 1 of those relationships is A part of who I am, and then as they aged, they needed care and we changed roles in terms of care as caregivers.

And they also needed professional care workers as they needed more assistance. And in the cycle of life, every one of us is going to be touched by this issue

we all have people we love who we are going to care for, or who we are currently caring for and organizing our society around making sure that we’re supported in that project is such a powerful unifying force. It gives us a vision to move towards together. And so that’s why I love this work and this movement is because it’s this place that is.

Fundamentally rooted in love, um, where we can come together and, and imagine a future that supports us all in a whole new way.

Sarah Jones Laptop: I love that. 

Sarah Jones: So, if that’s the present of the care economy, what’s the history? Like, I have a friend, I think you know, who wants to chime in here. 

Miss Lady: Uh, my name is Miss Lady. Hi, Ai-jen. How you doing, baby? 

 you know, when I was a young girl, I’m a black woman from the South. Domestic was the job that black women could have. And that’s part of maybe why they said, we don’t want to pay these people. Nothing. You know, I think there’s racism in, in this also, this legacy. That, you know, uh, BIPOC, you would say, people, our labor does not get valued as much.

And I’m so happy to see that, you know, in this generation, y’all are seeing the value. I want my reparations, baby, for all the domestic, you know, contributions that we made.

Ai-jen Poo: Yes well,The onion to to peel back on this is really, um, is really profound. The 1st domestic workers, the 1st care workers in the United States. Many of them were enslaved black women. Domestic work has always as a profession been associated with black women. Immigrant 

Sarah Jones: women yeah. 

Ai-jen Poo: of marginalized social status, and that is not an accident.

 That’s at the roots of our entire economic framework. And, and it, it has sustained through time. Um in the 30s when, um, President Roosevelt was developing the vision for the New Deal that was really the foundation of our labor laws. It would really set the tone for the kind of rights and protections that working people have in our country.

These massive sweeping bills were created the Fair Labor Standards Act that set up the minimum, the right to a

Sarah Jones: Minimum wage, right.

Ai-jen Poo: The National Labor Relations Act that gave people the right to form a union and collectively bargain for better working conditions. And then after that, social security and on and on. Um in in the time that those bills were being debated in the 30s.

Southern Dixiecrats who were very invested in a plantation economy and the kind of slavery rooted economic model

 refused to support those bills if they included protections for domestic workers and farm workers who were the two groups of two industries where black workers were concentrated. And In a concession to those members of Congress, those bills passed with those exclusions in place, and it really set the tone for how domestic workers would be treated in our law and policy.

So, over and over again, you’ll see these exclusions for generations to come until, um, Black women like Dorothy Bolden started organizing and demanded change at the federal level. And the National Domestic Workers Alliance is very much a part of that proud tradition of women of color organizing to try to assert the dignity and the value of this work.

 And and so that’s the promise of care. It’s like, it could get us, it could get the flywheel going in the right direction. So to speak, um, for our democracy, for our economyacross the board, but especially for women. And people of color who’ve been disproportionately harmed by our lack of a care infrastructure.

It’s always the people with the least amount of power and resources who are hurt the most by our failures to collectively take on these challenges as a society.

Sarah Jones: Yes, And it’s like, you know, fast forward to now we’re still dealing with all of it misogyny and racism. It’s like, we shouldn’t need a pandemic to understand how essential all of this essential work really is. You know, and not just professional workers, but like, it’s all of us, right?

I can’t think of anybody who’s not helping their aging parents or raising kids or doing both at the same time. Or in my case, I got injured and all of a sudden I was a big part of the care economy. I needed the folks, you know, at the various facilities that were helping me. I needed help in my home. And it was like, Oh, without these people showing up for this really difficult, highly skilled work, can you speak to that piece?

I feel like there’s this, you know, I grew up in a family of people who worked in the medical field And so there’s almost this like, oh, if you’ve gone to medical school, then your labor is worth more than the person who still is responsible for like keeping you alive I’d love to hear your thoughts about that.

Ai-jen Poo: It’s so funny because we have our, our economy is defined by these categories. Like, what is skilled labor versus unskilled labor? is, um. Professional versus what is natural? What is productive labor versus reproductive labor or nonproductive labor? And the truth is, is what those categories do is sometimes erase some of the most important and valuable inputs that we have in our lives.

And. Um, when I think about some of the caregivers, I know, whether they’re family caregivers or professional caregivers, I can’t think of a more valuable and also highly skilled services. I mean, the, the art and science of making sure that someone who is not mobile is able to actually get out of bed. Get dressed, take care of their hygieneand let alone participate fully in the community as even a worker.

Um, and that is what care workers enable for millions of people, whether they’re unpaid family members or professionals. It is. In some ways us at our highest purpose, and for so many, it’s a calling. It’s not just a job and people take enormous pride in the work. In some ways, you kind of have to, because the work is not actually valued materially the way that it should be in our economy.

Our care workers are some of our lowest paid workers in the entire economy.

Sarah Jones: And they’re more often,women of color, more often folks in right socioeconomic situations that are already taxed and challenging. 

Sarah Jones Scarlett: And that feels directly connected to all the inequalities we see in our society, and our politics more broadly, so

Sarah Jones: To me, what you’re building in this movement, it’s kind of the bridge to the democracy we actually want. It’s, you know, making sure that we have people who can then contribute to a thriving, democratic, you know, kind of community focused society. 

Ai-jen Poo: Absolutely. 

II mean, there’s a few aspects to that, um, to the role of care in a healthy democracy. First of all, in a country as diverse as ours is, it’s so important to have these experiences that we share with others. Really at the forefront of our culture, the former first lady, Rosalyn Carter has this famous quote.

There are only 4 kinds of people in the world. People who are caregivers or will be caregivers people who need care or will need care. And most of us share more than 1 of those identities at any given moment. And that is so powerful in a time when we’re constantly reminded of how we’re different and how we’re divided to actually be like, no, this is a place where we all have people we love who we are going to care for, or who we are currently caring for and organizing our society around making sure that we’re supported in that project is such a powerful unifying force. It gives us a vision to move towards together. and then the other piece is just at a very practical level.

Um, we have a growing aging population that needs care. We have jobs that could be created good jobs that could be created to provide that care, which would then enable working parents and family caregivers to have the support. They need to participate in the workforce and that layer of stress on our democracy that has to do with economic inequality, like a huge amount of pressure that has to do with care could be alleviated.

 and that would just help us all that would just increase our chances that we would thrive.

Sarah Jones Scarlett: Yes, exactly. I did want to ask, because you coined this idea, the genius of care, and also I’m thinking there’s something to, like the wisdom of care , like if you haven’t lived any of this yet, you don’t and I don’t know if this is an obstacle in your work, but is it harder for people who don’t want to ever think, I might get injured, maybe somebody listening is in their twenties or their thirties and they’re like, I don’t have kids, you know, my parents are fine.

Bella: I feel like you guys are like talking around me, so I’m just going to jump in. Hi Ai-jen, I love what you’re doing and I totally hear you about care but there is just so much else to deal with. Like me and my generation are protesting stuff that’s happening NOW I mean, like currently my tax dollars are paying for wars, they’re opening up new oil drilling sites every day, like police violence. I mean bviously I care about care but like, worrying about mySELF like 50 years from now? It’s just feels like selfish and hard to prioritize.

Sarah Jones Scarlett: Thank you Bella. So, yeah, that, almost the detachment or denial if we’re not old enough yet, of not wanting to feel like these issues will ever touch us or we’re not, You know, wanting to think, what if I become disabled or what if, you know, I have disabled folks in my community, in my family, like, is that a part of a lack of wisdom that can push careto the margins– not that all the other urgent issues aren’t important, but care is urgent too, it’s not either or 

Ai-jen Poo: I do think that there’s so many cultural norms and beliefs that we have. Um, we’re obsessed with youth in, in our culture. We’re fearful of aging, we’re fearful of disability. We have so many phobias that are so deeply seeded in our culture, and they’re all reinforcing of these hierarchies of human value, right?

CAN I HAVE AN MMM HERE?

That some lives. Are more valuable, um, more, they contribute more or, you know, they’re, they’re just like all of these norms, if you kind of trace them back, they’re all rooted in a story we have about whose life is more valuable and the genius of care that’s really just about. Being really in touch with humanity, with the reality of humanity, the reality of humanity is that 

Disability is a part of life. And as you said before, like, any 1 of us could become disabled at any moment.

Sarah Jones: Oh my God. Yeah.

Ai-jen Poo: the reality of humanity is that aging is living aging is a part of life.

Disability is a part of life. And as you said before, like, any 1 of us could become disabled at any moment.

Sarah Jones: Right. There was this great statistic. Is it that 10, 000 people turn 65 every day in this country?

Ai-jen Poo: That’s right. 10, 000 babies are born and 10, 000 people turn 65 We’re also living longer, so we need more care. And what’s happened is technology’s improved and our health care has improved essentially we’ve added an entire generation onto our life span. so we’re all living longer, and yet we haven’t changed how we live.

And that’s why there’s so much increased attention and pressure on the care economy, because we’ve kind of left it up to all of us as individuals to kind of navigate and figure out all of these people in our lives who we love, who need care on our own without an infrastructure and a set of policies, a set of systems to support us.

And we need that now more than ever.

Sarah Jones: Oh, that’s so, it’s like, what if we had this infrastructure of care as the basis for.

You know, how we think about democracy at all. You wouldn’t see an unhoused population like the one we have now. There would just be some basic safety nets. And like you’re saying, these jobs, these are incredibly valuable contributions to our economy overall.

 Isn’t this like a 600 BILLION dollar industry, I mean that’s bigger than pharmaceuticals!  But when I think about how much it costs to not care, 

Sarah Jones: we’d dig ourselves out of a hole faster just by actually caring.

Ai-jen Poo: It’s amazing that in 2024, we’re still having to assert that, but we truly are. And one of the things that is happening now, that’s so incredible is that we’re finally starting to see that, I mean I don’t know if it was COVID when we were all hyper isolated, we finally started to realize that we are actually in the same boat when it comes to care.

We can do everything in our power, and there’s actually no way to care for the people that we love without more of an infrastructure.  Without policies that help us afford child care without paid family medical leave without the kind of home care infrastructure that we need for our growing aging population or.

Disabled people. These are in a 21st century economy Actually, Senator Casey said it best. He said some people need a bridge or a tunnel to get to work and other people need child care. Other people need home care, and that is the awakening that we’re in the midst of right now.

And it is so exciting to me because it’s revolutionary in a way. You know, it’s like all this and we can see below the waterline and we’re starting to imagine what it would be like, what it could look like to live with all of that care visible and supported, it’s life, and just being able to not only not deny it or avoid it, but actually be present for it and think about how we can all grow together in the process of being more connected and present for the truth of our humanity.

That is the genius of care.

Sarah Jones: Oof, that’s why it’s genius, beyond just wisdom, even though you’re helping us find that too. I just feel like, for people listening, if they’re like me, they’ve never even heard of these ideas, and people can really get, you know, kind of caught up in an anxiety in a society like ours, the way our capitalism looks right now, since we have so little care infrustructure in place it’s like we’re all racing and scrambling and still can’t keep up. What if the solution is actually counterintuitive like what if we could slow down, be here, be present with what’s happening if we had the support we need.

Ai-jen Poo: and the beauty of being present for all of it is that that is how we grow. As humans as a society, and what is not normal or natural is not building systems to allow for us to be fully present on our terms. Right? When that is within our power to do John Powell, who is a social scientist at Berkeley often talks about how there’s 2 kinds of suffering.

the kind that’s kind of an inevitable part of life. Like we will all have our hearts broken. We will all endure grief and loss. Um, but there is suffering that is unnecessary, that is a result of human choices and policy like Child poverty, there’s absolutely no reason why there should be child poverty in the United States.

And in fact, we prove that when we lifted a huge percentage of children out of poverty with just one act of policy, the child tax credit during the pandemic. So it’s like, how do we do what we need to do in terms of our policies and our culture change to be able to address the unnatural forms of suffering so that we can be present as humans for life as it truly is.

Sarah Jones: I mean, the level of care that you’re talking about on the community scale I think it really trickles back into our own personal, right, ability to find that genius of care within ourselves.

Ai-jen Poo: That’s the beauty of it. It is within all of us. The fact that we have the potential to tap into an inner genius just because we’re humans is, care is how we do that. And, um, and that feels so hopeful to me.

Sarah Jones: And that is not only the genius of CARE, that is the genius of iGenPoo. And I’m excited for people to learn more about how they are personally part of this movement. Thank you so much.

Ai-jen Poo: Thank you, my love.

Rashid: Wow, that was deep, yo. Real talk.

Sarah Jones: Yeah, get you a friend like Ai jen.

Miss Lady: Listen, I think she a friend to everybody cause like she said, ain’t nobody getting out this life without needing care or needing help giving some care–or both. If you ask me this coountry need a whole Department of Care. Shoot, they spend all that money on department of Defense, and homeland security–if you really wanted a secure homeland you would make sure we take care of each other.

Nereida: Yeah, speaking of governments, apparently like, even the UK has like a health Ministry of Loneliness for disabled folks and the elderly since they’re so susceptible to isolation? 

Bella: I just feel so like late to the party– like I guess I knew elder care was a problem, I just never really thought of any of this as something the government could do anything about. Meanwhile, apparently seniors are the fastest growing unhoused population? I just feel bad none of this has been part of my activism.

Rashid: Ima let you off the hook, Bella, cuz yeah, you priviledged, but you ain’t the main problem– I think some people in the government just don’t WANT you to think this is something they could fix.

Nereida: That they have a responsibility to fix! We have subsidies for farmers in this country, we’re constantly bailing out banks and airlines it’s INSANE to think we can’t pay for this one thing we ALL need. Like imagine if millions of women and people of color could finally get fair pay for the work we do

Sarah Jones: Yup, we could have affordable daycare, healthcare, paid family leave.

Nereida: OMG, we would going be like a diverse version of Sweden, but with more daylight in the wintertime.

Sarah Jones: It’s so dope, right?  Lorraine, you’re very quiet.

Lorraine: I just never thought about how much it hurts the whole country that people don’t have care. I feel a little dizzy and lightheaded.

Nereida: I think what you’re feeling is anger, mama. That’s a good sign. That’s what’s gonna fuel us to change this stuff.  Also, in the spirit of America, Who Hurt you? When you can start to feel your anger you’re a step closer to healing it. 

Sarah Jones: That’s beautiful, Nereida. This country puts so much on all of our plates– we grind it out at work, we’re taking care of our famillies, and when it all gets to be too much, we blame ourselves for bad time management or not being strong enough to handle everything. When in reality, we’re overwhelmed because we don’t have the care we need–the care other countries DO provide their citizens by the way, at least every other so-called developed country. And, if hearing about this kind of support makes you think “well, Americans have just lost their work ethic”, then this week’s prompt might be for you.

Think about a time where you or a loved one didn’t have the basic care you needed. Maybe a job interview you couldn’t make because your childcare fell through last minute. Or a whole career track you had to quit so you could take care of your aging parents? And the disabled folks listening know all about our lack of care, because this country thinks it’s it’s a luxury to have support around the house, when it’s actually an essential mobility and access issue. 

Whoever you are, think of any time care would’ve been a game changer, for your mental health, your financial wellbeing, or your physical needs. And if you’re fortunate enough to have care in your life, think about how laws that make it available to everyone would improve our entire culture. 

Like we learned today, some people need a bridge to get to work, other people need care. So let us know what this prompt brought up for you, and any forms of care we haven’t mentioned that could be the bridge we need to the society we all deserve.

And by the way, if you haven’t shared a response to one of our prompts yet we’d love to hear from you, follow us on social media at the link in the description. We post reels every week and you can share your response in the comments–and we might repost it to our audience!