Conservatives actually argue that the introduction of government care services weaken the traditional family. The usual point about the Western (not just American) primacy of the nuclear family is brought up, but there isn't much digging into that beyond 'because capitalism.' Some European countries are even more strongly in this direction than the US others have retained more extended family links.

She briefly surveys ableism and disability, but it's limited, and there's not much thought to the experiences of parenting disabled children, or the stress of the sandwich generation and how it pulls on women. I wound up frustrated at so many points because there was so much more to say. I was also a little surprised-and frustrated-at her lack of acknowledgement of body size issues (beyond her own personal issues with her body) and how that impacts people's experience with exercise, movement, and outdoor activity. I was honestly somewhat surprised-while her contemporary experience is almost stereotypically PNW urban middle class, she grew up in rural Pennsylvania. She brings up how the liberation of white women was and is predicated on the low-wage labor of other women who are largely Black and brown, but there isn't much thought to the experience of working class white women.

While she considers the intersection of race and class for herself, she's less careful for others. Unfortunately she's too prone to simplifying her analytical lens, treating all white people as a single cultural mass and allowing generalizations about African and Indigenous cultures to pass without comment. Garbes centers her focus as an American-born daughter of Filipino immigrants, and that's fine (and as I said, interesting). Insofar as the book has a defined thesis, it's that mothering in the USA is too individualized and Because the book is so short-and, to be honest, rather vague in places-much of it consists of brief ideas and quotes with relatively little analysis.

The memoir portions are interesting and well written, but the cultural analysis is not. I was so disappointed by this book after the glowing reviews.

Essential Labor by Angela Garbes