Apr 17

Apr 17 Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change

Author: Angela Garbes
Publisher: Harper Wave
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Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.

Cover Description

From the acclaimed author of Like a Mother comes a reflection on the state of caregiving in America, and an exploration of mothering as a means of social change.

The Covid-19 pandemic shed fresh light on a long-overlooked truth: mothering is among the only essential work humans do. In response to the increasing weight placed on mothers and caregivers—and the lack of a social safety net to support them—writer Angela Garbes found herself pondering a vital question: How, under our current circumstances that leave us lonely, exhausted, and financially strained, might we demand more from American family life?

In Essential Labor, Garbes explores assumptions about care, work, and deservedness, offering a deeply personal and rigorously reported look at what mothering is, and can be. A first-generation Filipino-American, Garbes shares the perspective of her family's complicated relationship to care work, placing mothering in a global context—the invisible economic engine that has been historically demanded of women of color.

Garbes contends that while the labor of raising children is devalued in America, the act of mothering offers the radical potential to create a more equitable society. In Essential Labor, Garbes reframes the physically and mentally draining work of meeting a child's bodily and emotional needs as opportunities to find meaning, to nurture a deeper sense of self, pleasure, and belonging. This is highly skilled labor, work that impacts society at its most foundational level.

Part galvanizing manifesto, part poignant narrative, Essential Labor is a beautifully rendered reflection on care that reminds us of the irrefutable power and beauty of mothering.

TL;DR Review

I had been hoping for a bit more from Essential Labor. The memoiristic parts are its strongest. The rest may be a good introduction to many different social issues for those new to them, but it stayed pretty surface-level.

For you if: You are interested in thinking briefly about how different social issues intersect with motherhood.

Full Review

Essential Labor has been on my TBR for awhile, and when I was in the mood for a nonfiction audiobook recently I decided to download it. It’s pretty short, and while I didn’t think there was anything particularly wrong with it, I did feel like it stayed a bit more surface-level than I expected.

Angela Garbes is a Filipino-American writer and mother, and the pandemic’s focus on “essential labor,” combined with the acute challenges parents faced, inspired her to write this book. I thought the first half was the strongest; it was rooted much more in Garbes’ personal experiences and felt like a good combination of memoir and social justice writing. The second half reads more like individual lessons about different areas of social justice, and while there is a slight lens of relating these things back to motherhood, she stays very high-level.

I didn’t hate this, but I had expected a lot more out of it. She could have written a whole book on any one of those latter chapters and held my attention better — there is so much more to analyze and consider. I would recommend this to someone who feels like they’re just getting started with social advocacy or maybe wants a birds-eye view of how modern-day social issues intersect with parenting — but if you feel pretty well versed, maybe not.