Towards a politics of care

“They just don’t care.” that’s the phrase, I’m sure, has been relentlessly circling through our minds as scandal after revelation makes its way into the fore about our leader’s appetite for telling lies, hypocrisy, and of course, partying while he does it. They just don’t care. Why don’t they care? and this time I mean care in its more literal sense. Care, ‘to look after and provide the needs of’, is historically undervalued, not just in politics, but also in our social and economic relations. So in the month of Mothers’ day I’d like to talk about its consequences, and maybe, why we should all aim to be a little more caring.

It is apt that March also hosts international Women’s day, as one of the great struggles of the Women’s movement is, in great part, a cost of the undervalue of care. I’m talking of course about the gender pay gap. Caring professions are traditionally taken up by women, and as a result women are paid less for their work. On top of this, childcare is also often seen as the responsibility of mothers, this is work that goes uncompensated, a “second shift” as sociologist Arlie Hochchild called it.

A damning indignity of modern life is that caring roles are just not considered as important as the traditionally ‘male’ roles; our bankers, CEOs, and stock traders. But the last two years have made it absurdly conspicuous that this has been a miserable mistake. Many of us have had loved ones depend on care in the pandemic, many of us have depended on it ourselves. Without our carers, our residential nurses, hospital cleaners or social workers do you think we could have survived the pandemic?

At the heart of care is one of the hardest and most beautiful qualities to have: selflessness, and in times such as these it may be the single most important. Because there will always be those that don’t care, those that are mesmerised by the myths of strength, power, and dominance. It’s those myths that create tyrants and bullies like Vladimir Putin. So this Mothers’ day, show whoever has looked after you that you won’t see their care go undervalued. Happy Mothers’ day, Mum x.