In August, I attended the 2007 Carework Conference in NYC, an event organized by the Carework Network, a collaboration of researchers, professionals, and activists engaged with caregiving as a social issue. In the course of the day's discussion, Nancy Folbre (author of The Invisible Heart) remarked that advocates and carework scholars often talk about "the caring society," but we've never actually defined what a caring society is.
I've been thinking about Nancy's comment -- and my initial reaction is that a caring society is the opposite of whatever America is today, after twenty-five years of neoconservative assault on the spirit and substance of the nation's social welfare policies. But, you know, that's a pretty cynical point of view. In fact, I believe the majority of Americans are good-natured -- we care about our families, our friends, our neighbors, our co-workers, our communities, children with rare forms of cancer, the troops in Iraq, the homeless, the hungry, disaster victims, the fate of the planet, endangered species, abandoned pets -- there seems to be no limit to the people, creatures, and things we're compelled to care about. On the other hand, 47 million Americans are without health care coverage, more than 35 million experienced food insecurity last year, and 86 million US workers do not have a single paid sick day they can use to care for an ill child. And, of course, the United States has the highest rate of child poverty among affluent nations.
Perhaps on an unconscious level, most of us understand that our personal well-being is inextricably linked with the well-being of other living things with which we share our world. (We even have a label for people who lack this innate sense of connection: sociopathic.) But as regular folks living in societies with complex political and economic cultures, we have limited power and resources to correct conditions that put some families and communities at greater risk for hardship, exclusion, and unnecessary suffering. So we concentrate our caring efforts on protecting and helping those closest to us and, under special circumstances, we extend caring gestures to those beyond our intimate circle (we call this impulse "good will"). There are caring people in every society -- but not all societies are caring societies.
Describing the ideal qualities of a caring society is a momentous project -- maybe even a subversive act -- and and I can provide only a rudimentary sketch. But the first thing I'd say is that caring societies aren't utopias -- they don't eliminate the inherent risks of the human condition, or the potential for bad actors to do harm. Perhaps the biggest difference between caring societies and uncaring ones is that caring societies demonstrate a collective commitment to reducing chronic disparities in well-being regardless of the perceived cause, but particularly when historic patterns suggest that disparities are reinforced by oppression, exploitation, discrimination, and unequal access to services, opportunities, and resources. Caring societies can't obliterate racism, sexism, xenophobia, crime, poverty, violence, war, or the tendency of capitalist systems to skew toward imbalances of power. But they do take action to minimize human suffering and inequality of outcomes produced by the social environment, without infringing on human rights (more on that subject, later).
In other words, caring societies favor systems that foster social inclusion and human development over systems that concentrate privilege, wealth, and political power among an elite minority. This doesn't mean everyone in a caring society gets to live like a millionaire. It means that in caring societies, the state takes realistic action to assure the benefits of economic and technological progress -- and the burdens of economic downturns -- are broadly shared, and that everyone has a genuine opportunity to flourish to the best of his or her ability.
Discussions about care and equality typically focus on social policy. But from my perspective, the core of caring societies is ideological -- that is, caring societies build on a specific way of thinking about what exists, what is good, and what is possible. Beyond a baseline orientation toward mutual obligation (as opposed to the glorification of hyperindividualism), political and economic cultures in caring societies are guided by the principle that caregiving is a primary human activity which sustains human life, promotes collective well-being, and is necessary for the growth and stability of functional communities. Care is a social structure as well as a social activity, and systems that produce a shortage of care, or rely on exploitation and gender inequality to assure an adequate supply of care, create predictable social problems.
The evolution of political and economic culture in the United States has produced a selective shortage of health care, for example -- some Americans have excellent care, while others have less than they need or want -- and exceptionally high levels of income inequality. A related outcome is that the US has very high rates of infant and maternal mortality compared to other wealthy countries, but not all populations of mothers and babies are equally at risk (rates are highest among African Americans and Native Americans). From the racial composition of the incarcerated population to disparities in disease-related mortality, there are multiple indications that the US social environment tends to reproduce inequality and produce selective shortages of care. As it happens, our organizing ideologies and economic mythology are consistent with this result -- in fact, some Americans believe that vastly unequal life outcomes are a natural, inevitable, and morally acceptable condition of highly productive societies. Not coincidentally, the people in the best position to exploit this view are economically and culturally privileged.
The power to change unbearable conditions
With that in mind, I propose that a third feature of caring societies is a form of government which gives ordinary people of good will the power to change unbearable conditions through political participation and collective action. (By "unbearable," I mean conditions and systems which are unhealthy, inhumane, exploitive, discriminatory, environmentally irresponsible, and/or predictably result in selective shortages of care and well-being for less advantaged groups). The United States has an exemplary form of participatory government -- at least on paper. Yet caring citizens depend on a triage approach to manage the effects of social problems in their communities -- we volunteer at soup kitchens, donate goods and food to those in need, and build homes for displaced and disenfranchised families through projects like Habitat for Humanity. To ignore the pain of those around us is unthinkable -- and even in the healthiest societies, people have urgent and chronic needs which are best met through emergency services and direct support. But in the US, we have a history of political resistance to investing in the type of social infrastructure that would improve the odds for those at risk -- which today, includes a growing number of middle-income workers and families.
It's important to know that the "ordinary people of good will" I've mentioned are not the ones who are dragging their feet. The majority of Americans want universal health care, and national surveys find that most US adults support policies guaranteeing workers paid sick days and income replacement when they take time off for family and medical needs. But despite the fact that we live in a democratic society, it's pretty clear that what most Americans think carries very little weight with decision-makers. No society can eradicate the tendency of capitalist systems to tip toward power hoarding and plutocracy, but caring societies take steps to buffer the effects of market forces in the interest of fairness and progress, and manage to regulate labor conditions and fund human services without the economy going down the drain (see: Finland and Denmark). Caring societies depend on vibrant economies (as well as effective protection from threats), but can only exist where the political commitment to economic growth and social welfare is evenly balanced.
Which winds back to the issue of public policy. In recognizing caregiving as a primary human activity, caring societies account for the fact that caring for others is time consuming; location dependent (care must be provided in the place where people who need care are situated); requires physical labor, mental planning, and investment of material resources; and cannot always be combined with competing activities. Public policies in caring societies recognize that when the time, labor, and resources available for caregiving fall below a certain level, the quality of care suffers and may fall below the level of sufficiency. (This is true in every setting where care is provided, from households and day care centers to hospitals and elder-care facilities.) Without consistent and adequate care, people who need care have a lower quality of life and poor health, social, and mortality outcomes, which reinforces inequalities between groups with access to sufficient care and those who are struggling. In all societies, care and well-being gaps track along racial, class, ethnic, and gender lines, but disparities in well-being are particularly glaring in the United States compared to other industrial countries. Caring societies adopt an array of regulations, development programs, health and education policies, and social insurance strategies to narrow the divide.
Since the end of World War II, countries in Western and Northern Europe have done a much better job of closing the gap than the United States, which presently favors cultural reform over structural approaches to resolving chronic social problems (such as allocating funding to abstinence-only education and marriage promotion to reduce teen pregnancy and child poverty, or underwriting programs to educate employers about the bottom-line benefits of workplace flexibility to reduce gender disparities in employment outcomes). The reasons the US lags so far behind other industrial countries in supporting working families are culturally complicated. One reason is that Americans regard caregiving as a responsibility which is properly confined to the private sphere. This makes it easier for politicians to perpetuate a kind of willful ignorance about reality of human dependency, and for economist to disown care as a trivial by-product of a voluntary transaction -- something that "just happens" when people feel love, empathy, or good will toward others, rather than a deliberate, productive effort which requires the right conditions to ensure good outcomes. Remnants of resistance to racial and gender equality -- which are more widespread today than most people imagine -- are an added factor in the family-unfriendliness of US social policy.
An expansive vision of human rights
Another characteristic separating caring societies from uncaring ones is that caring societies endorse an expansive vision of human rights -- a vision that may not be attainable even in the most compassionate and inclusive cultures, but which serves as a guideline for right action. While not all-encompassing, the UN Declaration of Human Rights (1948) is a fine place to start. There are numerous articles in the Declaration that apply to minimum standards of well-being, mutual obligation, and sites of care, including: "The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State" (Article 16.3); "Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control" (Article 25.1); and, "Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible" (Article 29.1). More recent articulations of human rights defending the rights of children and calling for the elimination of all forms of racial, ethnic, religious, and gender discrimination also apply.
Finally, caring societies acknowledge that care is provided in a relational context, even when it's delivered through the market or in institutional settings. In practice, caring for others involves physical contact and communication, and sometimes requires continuous or intensive effort depending on how well the individual who needs care can function on his or her own. While intimate or affectionate bonds aren't a prerequisite for the initiation of caregiving, affectionate bonds often motivate caring action, or may develop from it.
Regardless of the depth of emotional connection, caregiving requires specific knowledge of the recipient's needs, which is learned through training, observation, and experience. The minimal requirement on the caregiver's part is a psychological ability to orient one's actions toward the well-being of another, a disposition child-development experts describe as "sensitivity and responsiveness." You may dislike someone personally, but still care enough about his basic humanity to pull him out of a ditch. Or you may love someone beyond measure, and still decide that her immediate needs are less urgent than your own. The human element in caregiving leads to unavoidable complications that can conflict with other obligations and opportunities. Under ideal circumstances, caregiving is practiced in a social environment that doesn't penalize caregivers for their periodic need for flexibility, or reserve the highest rewards for those who are able to mimic autonomy by delegating their caregiving responsibilities to someone else. To put it bluntly, care is not something you can buy from a vending machine or download from the internet whenever you happen to need it. It's something people provide directly to other people, creatures, and things as a method for maintaining life and creating social conditions that support human flourishing. And the act of providing care -- as well as the experience of receiving it -- can have deeply personal meaning.
While the potential to build a society guided by a political ethic of care seems far-fetched in a culture where winner-takes-all competition trumps the belief that we're all in this together, the ideas I've presented here aren't alien to the modern worldview. We're exposed to these meanings and moral practices in the course of relational life -- which, unfortunately, is a source of knowledge long suppressed by dominant narratives of human motivation and how the world works -- and through compassionate teachings of faith. Over time, we can use this intelligence to rework the common definition of what exists, what is good, and what is possible, and to expand the current boundaries of collective responsibility for the general welfare.
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Readers who've made it this far may be wondering whether this cerebral exercise has a practical application. I'm confident that it does, particularly in terms of thinking about gender equity and the policy objectives of progressive activism. In the past five years, we've been treated to dozens of books exploring why American democracy hasn't lived up to its potential, as well as a growing body of literature explaining the social costs of the work-life disconnect and what to do about it. Recently, several important works have highlighted the role of racism in America's reductive approach to social spending, and old, misguided debates about race and inequality have resurfaced. Perhaps the question we need to ask now is not "why?," but "what's next?" What vision, resources and strategies will be required to move our political and economic future in a new direction? And where, exactly, do we want to go?
America will not be transformed into a caring society overnight -- as Jody Heymann observes in Unfinished Work: Building Equality and Democracy in an Era of Working Families, the process is likely to be more evolutionary than revolutionary. But one thing should be self-evident: The reason societies tolerate systemic inequality and selective shortages of care is that the dominant political culture supports the assumption that certain people are innately superior to others -- despite a nation's stated values. And that, dear reader, is unbearable.
mmo : december 2007 |