J.D. Vance’s comment about childless Americans has brought to the forefront what many without (biological) children have experienced in private settings. I have often discussed the underappreciated role of being an “auntie” with women in my circle. This role is not unappreciated by the parents, the guardians, or the children but rather by society, which tends to criticize those without children. Yet, society reaps the benefits of the increased productivity of parents and the overall well-being of families due to the unpaid care and financial support we provide.
Data and the Care Economy
Nancy Folbre has received a $2.7 million grant to improve the data available to study the care economy. The grant announcement states:
Unpaid child care and elder care are still not officially considered “work” and people providing unpaid household services are still not considered part of the “labor force.” Transfers of money within families, such as expenditures on children, receive little attention in official measures of consumption or investment and government transfers are categorized as mere redistribution even when they represent productive investments in human capabilities. The growing number of researchers exploring issues relevant to U.S. care policy are hampered by shortfalls in existing data.
Folbre’s grant offers an opportunity to improve the collection and reporting of data on the unpaid care of “aunties and uncles.”
Activism and Unpaid Work
Folbre’s project is also an opportunity to expand the American Time Use Survey volunteer examples to capture unpaid sociopolitical work. In Banks (2020) argues:
…neither feminist household nor social economy theories devote sufficient attention to the nonmarket unpaid work that racialized women perform through collective action to protest injustice, secure resources, and resist marginalization for their communities. However, Black women and other racialized women in the United States have always performed unpaid sociopolitical collective work. They have done so because their communities have always lacked sufficient access to public and private sector resources and because the public and private sectors have engaged in actions that threaten the safety and welfare of community members through environmental hazards and state-sanctioned violence. (p.347 ).
An example of this type of collective action is the Zoom call organized by Win With Black Women last week, which raised funds for the Harris campaign.
Same Rhetoric
In her essay “Rhetoric and Family Values,” Julianne Malveaux writes about President Carter appointing a Black divorcee to lead the White House Conference on Families (1980) and the discussions that ensued to define “family.” The divorcee did not lead the conference held a year later. I am disheartened that, 44 years later, what one’s womb has produced is being discussed as a qualification for leadership. Perhaps the act of carrying a child to term should be recognized as unpaid labor.
I’m turning 58 on Sunday – single income, no kids. Instead of buying me a cat, I kindly ask that you donate $58 to WISER, give a shout-out to an auntie or uncle, or offer assistance to the hundreds of racialized women doing the unpaid sociopolitical work to make the promises of America a reality!
Happy Birthday to former WISER Board members Erica Johnson (8/8), Idrissa Boly (8/12) and Pedro da Costa (8/18).
