First Shift Justice Project Book Club- Essential Labor by Angela Garbes

Welcome to the first installment of the First Shift Justice Project book club! Every few months, I will be posting reviews, comments, and reflections on recent books that have come out and are relevant to our work. This month, we will focus on Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change by Angela Garbes.  

At First Shift, we provide legal support to parents working in low-wage jobs- whether they face discrimination, issues with leave, or even need help coordinating their benefits. We meet parents where they are, as both caregivers and workers. We are also intimately aware of the labor involved in care work, partnering with the National Domestic Workers Alliance, among other organizations, in order to help pass a Domestic Worker Bill of Rights in the District. 

Garbes’ book focuses on the relative positions of mothers and care workers in our culture and how we can reorient our priorities to properly value their work. It weaves together materialist analysis of people mothering under capitalism, a cultural history of labor migration in the Philippines, and the author’s more personal reflections in order to paint a full picture of what it means to provide care in the U.S. today.

Overall, Garbes wants the same thing that First Shift strives towards- a world in which family caregiving holds the same value as paid employment. While she is not prescriptive about what would need to change in our society to get us there, she is clear eyed about what she sees as the main impediments. The long tails of capitalism, colonialism, and white supremacy prevent us from being able to fully care for each other and the world around us. They manifest in small ways as well- in silence, secrecy, fear, shame, and insecurity (both emotional and financial). 

Garbes helps us imagine a more expansive world, beyond these corrosive forces. Some of the most poignant passages of the book detail how she was able to find a community of care during the pandemic, podding with another family for childcare and forging lasting relationships along the way. She also nods to policy solutions that would help reorient society around an ethic of care like paid family leave and freer transnational migration.

However, though conscious of the struggles of low-wage workers, the book does mostly center an upper middle class perspective. In order for the book to be fully persuasive as a study of care work in America, it would need more from people, like many of First Shift’s clients, who did not have the luxury of holing up in their homes during the pandemic. How do they work to create better communities of care? How do policy solutions put forth center them and their struggles?

While Essential Labor may not have probed these questions, they are precisely the types of questions we seek to answer here at First Shift. By supporting our work, we can all create a world in which low-wage workers have the time, the income, and the space to support their families as they see fit. 

Thanks for reading! And stay tuned for the next installment of the First Shift Justice Project book club! We will be taking on Belabored by Lyz Lenz.

By: Allison Tallering