Holding It Together: How Women Became America’s Safety Net

As America’s social safety net is being dismantled, women are the ones picking up the slack, according to this eye-opening study. Sociologist Calarco (Negotiating Opportunities) asserts that post-WWII neoliberalism has left America with a DIY society grounded in the rhetoric of “good choices” that in practice relies on the unpaid labor of women. Through hundreds of interviews, largely conducted in Indiana, Calarco shows how American society preps women for a sacrificial understanding of motherhood, strands them as stay-at-home moms while their spouses build careers, and promotes a “supermom myth” that pushes women into an intensively protective role (which varies in specifics, ranging from keeping one’s kids out of Satan’s clutches to making sure they are on an Ivy League path) that also uses women’s labor to make up for government shortcomings in areas like food safety and education. To combat women’s overwork, Colarco makes an innovative proposal for a “union of care”—a singular labor union for those providing healthcare, childcare, education, and eldercare, whether professional or at-home, that would fight for change. Throughout, Calarco’s case studies boil the blood as they evoke struggling moms’ sense that they are trapped (one mother, who “sacrificed sleep” to avoid paying for childcare, was also “hesitant” to return to work “despite being unhappy” because she knew the burdens of childcare would still fall to her). This will fuel readers’ outrage. (June)