Holding It Together

April 15, 2024
Historical analysis of how women have always been America's de facto social safety net. Sociology professor Calarco makes an evidenced-based argument about how women have been holding America together for decades, receiving little recognition or credit in comparison to their male counterparts. Drawing on 4,000 surveyed parents and five years of research, the author demonstrates the American tradition of relying on women to hold society together, forced to do the dirty work and bear the weight of a deeply flawed system. Calarco reveals that the U.S. continues to sell and push the neoliberal narrative throughout the country, instilling the idea that profit is the highest priority and that the state should stay out of it. The author chronicles the eye-opening stories of many people who have endured the worst of the system, including a single mother who struggles to stretch her meager state benefits while working three jobs and caring for her children; a daughter who became her family's supplemental income foundation as a result of the opioid crisis. "Without a net, societies crumble," writes the author. "That's why people in the US are more depressed, more sick, and more likely to die young than people in other high-income countries. It's why we work longer hours but produce less. Why we have a higher poverty rate...why we have more political unrest." The lack of a net allows the broken system to continue to claim victims, more often than not leaving women to take on the grunt work. Calarco leaves readers to contemplate the many solutions mentioned throughout the book, from universal health care and child care to funding for agencies to assist the elderly. The author consistently emphasizes that it is a systemic issue, requiring a community response to be effective. Filled with heart and engaging research, this book offers new light on an ongoing nationwide problem.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

June 14, 2024
Sociologist Calarco has written a smart, convincing ode praising the women who make up America's social security net at the cost of their individual gain and well-being. In Calarco's research, including over 1100 interviews with almost 400 women--mostly from rural Indiana--the women describe having fewer opportunities, less time, and less money because of the caregiving roles they are often forced to take. Because of a vicious cycle where damaging myths uphold inequitable policies, Calarco fears, "We allowed ourselves to be deluded into believing that care isn't essential labor and that we can get by without a social security net." This is a useful and impassioned survey outlining why there are a lack of policies in America concerning caregiving and the history behind how we got stuck with the tenuous policies relying on women to pick up the slack. Copious footnotes enrich the text and bring more narrative and backstory. An easy sell for readers who enjoy qualitative rich nonfiction like Diana Greene Foster's The Turnaway Study (2020). An indispensable title for Indiana libraries and a solid purchase for libraries wanting to update their women's studies and public policy collections.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

July 15, 2024
As America’s social safety net is being dismantled, women are the ones picking up the slack, according to this eye-opening study. Sociologist Calarco (Negotiating Opportunities) asserts that post-WWII neoliberalism has left America with a DIY society grounded in the rhetoric of “good choices” that in practice relies on the unpaid labor of women. Through hundreds of interviews, largely conducted in Indiana, Calarco shows how American society preps women for a sacrificial understanding of motherhood, strands them as stay-at-home moms while their spouses build careers, and promotes a “supermom myth” that pushes women into an intensively protective role (which varies in specifics, ranging from keeping one’s kids out of Satan’s clutches to making sure they are on an Ivy League path) that also uses women’s labor to make up for government shortcomings in areas like food safety and education. To combat women’s overwork, Colarco makes an innovative proposal for a “union of care”—a singular labor union for those providing healthcare, childcare, education, and eldercare, whether professional or at-home, that would fight for change. Throughout, Calarco’s case studies boil the blood as they evoke struggling moms’ sense that they are trapped (one mother, who “sacrificed sleep” to avoid paying for childcare, was also “hesitant” to return to work “despite being unhappy” because she knew the burdens of childcare would still fall to her). This will fuel readers’ outrage.