Elissa Strauss

Because she will address the care crisis

For a very long time, politicians avoided the care crisis. Then, slowly, they began addressing it, but often at a remove. Care was a problem to solve, a matter of policy more than identity. They’d talk about paid-leave, childcare, and eldercare reform, and we, the nation’s depleted parents and caregivers, would bow gratefully because, yes, yes, yes, we need it. Truly, we were happy just to hear them speak about it, even if the policies never became a reality.

This time, something different and bigger is happening. Care isn’t just a part of the policy conversation, but an increasingly important part of how candidates present themselves and their visions of love, family, and community. Choose carefully.

On one side, we have some people who do seem to genuinely value care, but can’t figure out how to detangle it from the patriarchy and homophobia, or address the hard economic reality parents and caregivers of all sorts face in our current system.

On the other side, we see a whole new vision of family values emerging, a non-patriarchal, expansive, inclusive vision for a pro-all-kinds-of-families, joyful, and abundant future. We see men like Tim Walz, who don’t just support parents and caregivers, but present themselves as people who have been profoundly shaped by care and bring those care-honed selves to work every day. Walz doesn’t just tolerate neediness, vulnerability, difference, and dependency, but embraces it. Everyone is welcome in that home.

We also have Kamala’s childhood-care story; the aunties, the beautiful Russian nesting dolls of care, who raised her alongside her single mom because that’s a family, too. And her adult-care story, showing us how women who don’t have their own biological children can find all sorts of ways to care for loved ones, strangers, and everything in between. 

We have found ourselves in a moment when we can say, yes, we need support in caring for our families because we love them deeply and believe that such a love should be fueled and framed by the collective. We want to find meaning, self-worth, and even, sometimes, joy in the care experience—but know we can still get there if we are overwhelmed by it. We need leaders who want to give us that fuel, provide the scaffolding, so we can care how we want to care, and love how we want to love.

Elissa Strauss is the author of When You Care.