Angela Garbes on why mothering is 'essential labor'

Some stories are funny, others are cut wrenching, but all are unapologetically human and remind us that every success and every setback is accompanied by a choice, and that choice answers one question. Now, what did you ever see that on job search? There was a person interviewing these potential prospects and they go through a list of what the job entails, and it's three and sixty five days work a year, no paid leave, no time off, no vacations.

You have to clean up everything, fluids and your fluids, bodily fluids, etcetera. And and then you watch these people say, well, wait, wait, wait, wait, no, what what is the job? And then the person says motherhood? Oh god, yeah, yeah. My guest today is Angela Garbis. Angela is a writer, a thought leader, and the author of two books, including her bestseller Essential Labor, Mothering is Social Change. Reading it made me think more clearly about my own labor and the importance of care work, both

inside and outside of the home. But that's not the only reason I wanted to talk to Angela. Her book also sets up what I feel is a very clear now what moment for our society. How do we shift our collective view of care work to mess dick work and parenting given all that we learned during the COVID pandemic. It's a fascinating conversation, and I'm so excited to bring Angela's voice and her important ideas to this show. So

without further ado, here is Angela Garbash. First of all, thank you so much for taking the time to do this. I've really enjoyed your book. I both listened to it and then did my little highlighting and underlining things. It really taught me a lot. I feel that also taught me how much more I have to learn. But in Essential Labor, you really challenge the reader to re examine how they look at their own labor, not just their own labor, but the work of those around them, and

how to define it and how we value it. Can you talk a little bit about that, because I think that has gone through a lot of changes. But I'm interested in what you really think it's the most important about that concept. So I think that taking care of ourselves care work, domestic work. I'm thinking about all those things like getting up and taking a shower, changing the bedsheets, cooking some food, listening to your body, all of these things like that we really take for granted. And I

was I grew up. You know, both of my parents worked full time. I had a pretty comfortable upbringing. I didn't consider how much work went into maintaining our family and raising us and keeping us loved and fed and clothed right. And when I became a parent, I found it really humbling. I started thinking, like, gosh, how did my mom do this right? Like, she worked full time, she had three children, she was a new person in this country, she was separated from her family and support system.

I think in a lot of ways, I've been catching up, but I think I've been thinking about care work for most of my life. My mother also worked as a nurse. She was a hospice nurse who took care of people in their last stages of life, you know, intended to their families, and that sort of perspective that I gained becoming a mother and growing older, was beginning to see my mother as a person and all of the work she did, both professionally and personally caring for people well.

And what you started off with is self care, which is the interpretation of self care not being an act of selfishness or ego, but actually preparing you to even be more essential and helpful to those around you. Did your mom see that differently? I grew up in a household where I think that love was demonstrated, and especially motherhood and mothering was sacrifice. You know. I think that my mother often um put her own needs last. You know, she still got herself at the door and was you know,

put herself together. But that's what I mean. I think that, like, I'm not thinking about self care like you know, lighting a candle and taking a bath. I'm talking about just basic care that so many of us take for granted. But is the thing that makes all other work possible? Right, If we don't have food in our pantry, you know, if we don't have running water, if we don't have someone you know, waking us up, in the morning and

getting us out the door. We can't do anything else, and so I want to kind of expand this idea of caring and mothering to call a lot of people in and to show that we do this work for ourselves, and we do this work for our children, We do this work for our elders and people who are sick, and people who just needed a little extra love. And part of the way that this book came about was that at the beginning of the pandemic, you know, I have two daughters, they are seven and four now, and

our preschool shut down. So I was with my children twenty four seven for four straight months, and that was very intense. And as much as I knew that that was the most important work I could be doing, you know, keeping them safe, keeping my community safe and healthy, I felt really like, oh God, this is this is a

lot of work. And this was a time in the pandemic when we were talking about essential workers, right, we were talking about health care workers, we were talking about sanitation workers and teachers, and I believe all of those people are essential workers. But I couldn't get around the idea.

I just kept feeling like, what about me? What about parents, what about mothers, Like we are all working twenty four seven, We were working around the clock professionally taking care of our kids, and it feels pretty damn essential what we're doing, and why aren't we talking about us this way? You know, I had a single mom. I always thought that i'd

be a single mom for some reason. And what's so strange is what I discovered during the pandemic was that I really thought that it was going to instantly be shared and equal. And the number of times that my husband would say to me, yeah, but you're the mom, and I feel like, what can we can we pause here?

Can we unpack this? Like? Yeah? And it wasn't just the idea of things that I had to attend to or you know, I I we started trying to divide it and I said, okay, look, I'll do all the sheets and all the towels, but you each have to be responsible for your own laundry. And they didn't balk at it. It was sort of seamless. The one person who didn't do any of the laundry was my husband, which I didn't hold against him because he's a really

good cook. Right, So it was all these different ways we navigated, but there was a sense of uselessness and depression that I felt because the work that was done never got finished, and there didn't seem like there was a lot of thanks. Yeah, but I think most people who are mothers and who go into it with eyes open in any way, no, Like you don't go into parenting to be celebrated every day like it's it's in

some ways a thankless job. I wanted unconditional love. The things that are most rewarding about it are very private, right, like the like the way a child like holds your hand, or the way that you know that you comfort them like that only you can do. It's very satisfying, but it's extremely difficult to quantify. It has no monetary value, and if you try to describe it to anyone, it's weird.

It's very ephemeral. But yeah, I definitely felt like in my household, like my husband and I have more conversations than I would like about logistics, like how do we divide things as equitably as possible? And I just know, like I think ahead about things in a way that he does not, Like if I know I'm making dinner, I'm thinking about it like the day ahead or like in the morning, like what's in our fridge And he's like opening the refrigerator at five thirty being like what

do we got? And I I don't understand that at all, Right, but so I think, you know, it's partly the way we are conditioned and the way we are brought up. And even like great men, right, um, feminist men are they have massive blind spots that they're not often aware of. You know, it's like you're the CEO of a company.

You know, you're running a production company. You know, it happens to have these different characters, these different actors that are playing different roles in their lives, and you know when they're very needy, as many actors can be. But you talk about raising children as a social responsibility, yeah, one that requires robust community support. But in America that is not necessarily the way we're taught or the way we are organized as a society. Can you talk a

little bit about that. Yeah, So the primary way that we organize family and can in America is the nuclear family. We hear about this, right, it's like a mom and a dad and like two point four kids or something, right, like, based on the data and it's a very distinct American modern way, Like the nuclear family has not been around really for that long. It's been maybe around for like

a century, maybe less than that. And if you were to sort of like zoom out, the way people have lived all around the world for centuries is more communally. I mean, even the the original nuclear family in America was like a man goes out to work and a wife stays home, which is why school gets out at two thirty. But modern America now women both want to work out of the home, and also life is so

expensive that most households need to parents working. And because in the United States, we don't guarantee basic human rights right healthcare is tied to working. We don't guarantee housing, we don't guarantee family leave, um, we don't guarantee education. So we all have to work and we're all left feeling like these are my individual problems to solve. Where I believe that you know, you and I are here

not because one person raised us. We're here because a group of people raised us, right, Like there were babysitters, there were nanny's, there were teachers, there were mentors. Right the future of our existence as people and the continuation of America relies on on having a next generation of

both you know, consumers and workers and just people. I'm really curious because if this why is why is this the right time for our society to start rethinking the definitinition of labor as essential and how do we kind of how do we go about attaining that and redefining it. So the care crisis as UM, we've all seen it. So when when schools and daycares and preschools shut down, we were lost, right, Like, there are two million less women in the professional workforce right now than there were

at the start of the pandemic. What do we lose? Do you think when women disappear? I mean, I think every parent is a working parent, whether they work outside of the home or not. But women's participation in the professional workforce outside of the home directly impacts our involvement in public life. It makes me sad to think about what we've lost. We've lost their art, we've lost their

policy ideas, we've lost UM their research contributions. Right, we've lost just women engaging um in discourse about what we need to be doing. And and those are the things that we're missing. The reason why we don't have you know, childcare and family leave is because the majority of people who represent us in government are old white men. Right, And so I think about how we've never had a president who knows why it's important to have like a

maternity leave policy or a family leave policy. Well, it used to be frowned upon. It was like, oh, are you going to be able to do your job if you have a baby, if you become a mother, It's that going to ruin everything that you are as a business person. Yeah, and we've seen now that it doesn't mean that some women are able to have both of those things, or I mean, I don't think it's possible to have it all. If you're I mean at all, it means you're you're figuring out how to do it all.

And this is one thing that was exposed in the pandemic. Right, So even people and I am luckily enough to count myself among them, I can outsource some of my childcare right to preschool teachers or to a babysitter. Right. The care crisis existed before the pandemic. It's just that some

of us felt it more than others in the pandemic. When, as I said, all of these mothers were dropping out of the workforce because they could not do professional work and domestic work and also you know, manage online school. We saw like there was a wave of articles where people are like, women are not okay. You know, America

doesn't have a social safety net. It has mothers, and even mothers who like you know, say are like the CEO of a company when they're like nannies could't show up, but their babysitters couldn't show with their house cleaners couldn't show up. They were all like, wait a second, I've done everything, I've leaned in and yet it all comes down to me. And I think this is the opportunity to see that we need we hide this work, this domestic labor, right, and we don't pay people very well.

People who do domestic labor are three times as likely to live in poverty as people who do any other job. But now is the time to say I saw this like this was exposed the sort of um, the way we've struck your American life is not actually sustainable. Well, and like you said before, I mean this show is about pivotal moments, and are now what moments? And I

think that this is a very very strong moment. But I also think that there's something that you touch upon, but I'd love to hear a little bit more about it is the guilt around not being a stay at home mom. I remember getting really depressed right after I had my first child, and part of it was because why I wanted to have a child so so terribly

and it was difficult for me. But then I felt flattened because was I only supposed to be a mother at that point and that was never I I wasn't prepared for that, because I wasn't all of who I am in that moment, and it took it really took a long time to find a version of balance, which I don't ever really think it feels balanced. I think of it more as like you're juggling right and on a good day you've you've got three or four balls

in the air, but inevitably something gets dropped right. It's just like it's just the way it is, and you kind of have to be like, well, that's what happened today, and I'm just gonna keep going. But I also think it's our social responsibility to as we are being re educated and how we look at this really having those conversations with your children too, because we're raising this next generation of hopefully conscious of the different levels of what

it means and how it's never just one thing. Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up, because the sort of piggyback off that idea of you know, we both felt flattened, like we were losing our minds a little bit doing all of this care work. Part of the reason why I wrote this book is to remind im myself that yes, like parenting oftentimes is drudgery, it's repetitive work, and um, it's hard, it's a real slog day in and day out,

but it does have tremendous power and meaning. You know, this is where we get to impart the values that are important to us, like to our children. This is where we get to speak to our children and say yes, like I love you so much and I'm never gonna stop taking care of you, but you should say thank you because getting dinner on the table is work, right, and like, yes, I love you and I want to

spend time with you. But if if Mama doesn't have time to go work, like to perform to you know, like be on set or for me like to sit in front of my computer and think and write. Then I don't feel like my whole self and I can't show up for you. And those are conversations that my parents didn't have with me, right, And I think women of previous generations we're not able to be their whole selves in the way that we are, And it's still

work to do it. Like I sort of fight to take up space and say that I'm allowed to have all of these things. But this is a real opportunity so that our daughters and our children it's a little less hard for them. Maybe it won't be less hard, but but they'll have an understanding, and they're that understanding will give them a certain power because they will they will have seen it, they will have seen it in action,

you know. And I think that's important. But say, for people who do struggle financially, right, what can we do to sort of compensate, Because you talk about compensating domestic workers. If we don't have a lot of money ourselves, the standard for the industry is low for what we pay people.

That is not our individual problem to solve, like this is a societal and structural one, right, I think we should pay people as much as we can, and to see this work is just as valuable as as the work we are going to go do, Like we hire someone to take care of our kids so we can do something like they're equal. All work is good work. You know, childcare is not less skilled than anything else. Like we're really kind of fooling ourselves if we think that.

And I think the way we begin to value that, well want it's to You know, a lot of these workers are mothers themselves, so I always wonder, like, who's taking care of their children? And you know, we had a nanny share my husband and I an two families that we're still friends with. Um when are little ones.

This is almost ten years ago. She was always allowed to bring her son, Bruce was his name, and he was three, and I was like, this is great because the children have another child to interact with, she doesn't have to worry, she doesn't have to pay for childcare. So I think there's there's we can just be creative, right, we can find out the people who we hired to do this work, what's going on in their life. Bruce sounds like a year old, by the way, That's why

I mentioned his name. He was Bruce you're Angela, Yeah, totally, he was. He was three and he had a wonderful bowl cut, and it would just be like, hey, he came into came to your house in a little suit. Um. You've talked a lot about the phrase of skilled versus unskilled. Yeah, why do you think care work isn't seen as skilled labor though? Because we don't define it as that because women do it, because we expect women to do it, and because it's in the home, because it's not like

outside in professional world. I think it's very sexist and it's racist too, because we have in America work that happens in the home, which is domestic labor and care work. It's because of slavery. The home has always been a site of work for black women in America, and we're comfortable paying people lower wages because in America we've come of age with this idea that people of color work in the home, right, and we're okay paying liber wages.

That's a legacy of slavery. You and I just talked about how doing just care work for several months made us want to like die, right, like because it's hard work, Like it is not easy. Well, you call it highly skilled labor. It's highly skilled, like you said, CEO, management of a household, right, multitasking, keeping tracked, to keep a

human being alive. Yes, yes, all of it, and to tend to their emotional and psychological needs, which is some of the hardest stuff and some of the most exhausting. You talk about it women as being characterized as in servitude. Yeah, this is what you're talking about, right, I'm thinking about it. Yes, doing care work and like mothers are expected to do

this for free. Let's go back to the CEO, the female CEO that I was talking about, who has had a housekeeper and a nanny and you know, a lot of support, and then the pandemic, they all went away because she couldn't have someone coming to her home and do those things. And then she felt like what am I doing? Like I'm still somehow in charge of everything

here in my home. Because no matter how successful you are in relationship to the male world in America, which is you know, patriarchy, all women are in a condition of servitude. And this is I think what's hard for a lot of people is that we are not so different from the people we hire to do this work.

And I really believe like we need to see ourselves as being in solidarity with that, because if we can win workers rights and a living wage for the people who we hire to do this work, actually parents, you know, we're one step closer to being able to say this work is valuable and and parents should be paid for this work, and parents should be compensated. H Do you see some changes happening where there's paid leave that's longer, or paid leave for the not just the father or

the mother. Yeah, I mean I think now we don't think of it as just maternity leave. We talk about it as family right and that father should take that, and we also talk about it in terms of it's not just about someone giving birth to a child. It's like if you're adopting, if you're welcoming a foster child into your home, if your mother gets sick and you

need to take care of them as elder care. I mean, at some point in your life, everyone you know, including yourself, is going to need care and time to do that. And so I see those changes happening in policies. Yes, I also see you know, the pandemic, it's terrible and it's still going on and it's terrible. But there's something that gives me hope, which is that, you know, I

formed a pod with another family. We heard about mutual aid, We heard about community kitchens and community of refrigerators and little free libraries. And to me, all of that was people saying I can't do this by myself. I need help, and people stepping in and saying I can't do this by myself either, and I want to help you. How can we help each other? And so what I see all around me or people have been doing that for the last two years, and I don't want that to

go away. As you said, like, this is a pivotal moment. It's a once in a generation moment, if you If I absolutely believe that, yes, and it's time to invest in the people who mother, not who are mothers of children, but who mother, who caretake And my mom, you know, she used to say to me, she'd say, don't kid yourself. She said blood is not thicker than water. And I used to think, like, well, that's terrible, and how do you And yet we relied so much on her friends.

And we have that a lot in our family with our girls, and I watch their different relationships with these people in our lives. I watched the different relationships with other friends mothers, and instead of getting jealous and said, well,

why don't you talk to me about that stuff? I'm your mother, I realized that there are some of their children that come to me and confide in me, and I it's not a problem, like I don't run back to the mom and you know, but I watch myself be a different voice in their life, a non judgmental voice that wants to help them. And doesn't that feel great? Doesn't that feel great to do that for other people? Well?

It is. It's interesting, is because I used to be really hung up on the fact that I was sort of bohemian and you know, I don't have a meal on the table, and you know, and then when I thought I couldn't have children, I thought, what am I? Who am I? That's all I ever wanted to be in this sort of identity that was tied into being able to provide a child to the world appropriation, you know.

And I realized, after having two children and seeing other people's children, that there were so many other ways that I could contribute that I didn't have a little apron on and have a perfect meal or a big gorgeous cookies or whatever, because those were all the things I grew up thinking we're valuable when I couldn't have been farther. It's just not reality, and especially now, like we look different, our lives look different, society has changed, right, and we

need like I love this. I want my daughters to have someone like you, like who I can't be everything to them, And that again goes back to that social responsibility, you know, like one parent is not enough, two parents is not enough, right, Like I need we need like in laws, aunties, like I said that chosen family, Like you don't have to have a desire for children. You don't have to particularly like children. I think it's great

if you know you don't. I don't. I don't like a lot of other people's children because I don't always like mine. But it's so nice to be able to you can still have meaningful relationships right with younger people, with older people, right with your peers. Like that's just

being human and that's just the that care. I'm curious to see what your mother thinks of these sort of new new ideas, just because that was an interesting piece in the way your mother grew up and the rules that she had with regards to being the mother in the household. Yeah, I mean my mother grew up in

the Philippines and it's a very different culture. You know, she felt, um, women are expected to you know, really run the household and to I mean, it's almost like you serve at the pleasure of your husband kind of a thing. Um. And a lot of what she was taught was about sacrifice and being making herself small and her own desires like took a back seat to everyone else's. UM. And there's a huge obligation to family in Filipino culture.

I think like that sort of wide family of like being close to lots of people, having extended family is something that I want more of in my life. And when my mother moved here to America, she just didn't have that kind of community, and my parents kind of really doubled down into um, you know, like an isolated life. But also my mother grew up with maids. You know,

in the Philippines, having domestic help is normal. You don't have to be rich to have a made It's just kind of you know, in a country that is poor and that still has a developing economy, it is really like there's somebody always poorer than you, and so domestic work is very, very common, and I have mixed feelings

about that, and so does my mother. You know. I think when we would go back to the Philippines, I could tell she was uncomfortable with having people, um, you know, like weight on us, do our laundry, clear the table. I grew up being told my mother used to say, I'm not your maid, so like you need to do the dishes and do all of these things. But um, over time, I've seen her really she she just respects the domestic workers and the maids authority and lets them

do their job. And she has like I've seen this over like the last few decades where she says to me, who am I to say that I can do their

job better than them? I can't. I loved that, Yeah, And I think it's really when I go to the Philippines, it is like, I know people are not making a lot of money, but like a job is a job and work is work, and I see them as occupying a place that's it's they're very integral to the families and it's it's complicated and I don't have like a one answer like, oh, it's it's good or it's bad, right, But one thing that I've been struck by is how

it feels very honest. You know, the maids are not hidden, the people who do the laundry, They're part of the household. Everyone knows them. And I think about how in America we hide that work away. So you're wanting to bring it more to the forefront in opening the discussion about empowering. Yeah, domestic workers are important and there's no shame, Like if you are fortunate enough to be able to afford, you know, someone in your home to help, I don't want to

take that away from you. I think that's great. I think that's fantastic because people can't do it all right. But I think the more of that domestic workers feel valued, I think there would be less shame, resentment, a division, you know, and it's not this less than type of of a regard, but really trying to uphold that. And I think that that message comes through very clearly in your book. And I think it's important because you grew

up with two very different distinct approaches to it. So if you were to look back at your life and just your whole journey which is continuing on. Yes, hopefully we'll continue for years now. Yes, absolutely. What have you learned and what do you think is the through line? You know, I became a writer because growing up I was again like, I'm a woman of color. I grew

up in a mostly white town. I saw how I just always felt like I was on the outside of things, you know, I kind of saw things for the outside. I was like, oh, the world is not meant for me. My food is different from whatever normal food is. And I think this idea of normal is something that I've always butted up against and and felt like why am I not included in that? Like why why is my family who is so wonderful and we're great? And I love our food more than like pizza, I'd rather eat

Filipino food. And I've always been sort of wrestling with this, like why is it that I know we are important and we matter, but I'm I feel like to the outside world, outside of our home, we don't. And I think I became a writer in a lot of ways to right myself into the story. And so a lot of my work, like from a young age, and what I do now is to insist that everyone's story matters, right, and there's a place for everyone, and everyone is valuable and we are equal. We have more in common than

we do not. I also think that what you sort of you encapsulate is this idea that when you say you're writing yourself into the story, you are making yourself visible, and you're making yourself not necessarily loud in an angry way, but heard, heard and seen, and that with books like your, I think the dialogue and the rhetoric around it, and the narrative itself is changing for the good. It may take a while, but again, like we started, we're works

in progress. Yes, no, I love that, Thank you. I feel really hopeful too, And I think about how you know, change is slow, sometimes frustratingly so right, and that's growth. Yeah, And I feel like it's ah, we're just on that journey. And but I share that same hope and I sense that I know it from talking to people, and I'm so happy to be I feel really honored to be part of moving that conversational law that was the wise

and wonderful Angela Garbas. If you want to hear more from her, pick up a copy of her book, Essential Labor Mothering as Social change. You'll be happy you did. That is all for us today. Talk to you next week now. What is produced by the wonderful Julie A. Weaver with help from Darby Masters. Our executive producer is Christina Everett. The show is mixed by Bahid Fraser and Christian Bowman. A special thanks to nicky Etre and Will Pearson.

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