Oct 12 2024 32 mins 8
How the myths that trap women into being America's social safety net con young men and hurt (pretty much) everyone.
“In the US, we groom girls to stand in for the social safety net from the time they’re old enough to hold a doll.”
From the first line of Jessica Calarco’s fantastic new book “HOLDING IT TOGETHER: How Women Became America’s Safety Net,” you’re confronted with truths that may change you and should change society.
Calarco, a professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin, first blew my mind with two sentences: “Other countries have social safety nets. The U.S. has women.”
Her new book expands upon that simple yet vast truth, exposing the history and costs of America’s indenturing women with the basic cares of others. She also unpacks the quasi-and-literally religious myths that have given this untenable system a veneer of “American exceptionalism.”
As we face this election that offers the starkest choice in recent U.S. history between two candidates–both in their identities and vision for the country–Calarco’s revelations and the research that inspired it are essential context. Without her work, it’s impossible to understand why Trump’s chest-beating and whining, insulting as it may be to so many of us, is so appealing, especially to young men.
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