Dependent Rational Animals
Should our policies aim towards self-sufficiency or interdependence?
An extremely begrudging congratulations to the New York Yankees on their come-from-behind Wild Card win. This weekend’s going to be fun. If it’s TS121 Friday, it’s Family Matters:
Women and Children First: The “Dignity” of admitting our interdependence
Apartments for Families: Everybody needs a little elbow room
Who Cares?: Interview with Elissa Strauss
It’s Me, Hi: HUD, New York Sun
Parting Shots
Women and Children First
Anti-poverty policy may have any number of goals in the popular imagination, but one of the most popular is the idea that social welfare policy should be orienting people towards self-sufficiency. Sure, one might allow, there may be some – the severely disabled, the elderly without anyone to care for them — who we may reasonably expect to always rely on public assistance. But the premise of much of anti-poverty reform assumes that the goal is to move individuals and families off of being dependent on government programs and towards life as autonomous, independent citizens.
What Leah Libresco Sargeant’s new book encourages the reader to consider is that dependence, properly understood, actually goes far deeper, and that self-sufficiency is, essentially, a kind of mirage. In its moral imagination and clear-eyed assessment of the reality of what it means to be human, “The Dignity of Dependence” inherits and builds upon the best tradition of Christian radicalism.
Her new book, released this week, is not an academic study of a concept, nor does it offer an overarching narrative arc. Instead, it lives up to its subtitle: a true manifesto, a heartfelt call to consider the subtle (and overt) ways the feminist revolution stalled out short of true social transformation. Sargeant wants to provoke the reader into seeing the world as something spikier and more complex than the easy feminism/anti-feminism debates that soak up the socio-political oxygen.
Anyone wanting easy answers or silver bullets beware. Like C.S. Lewis’ depiction of Aslan, Sargeant is not a tame lion. Chapter One details the ways in which she sees the world as having been built in “the wrong shape” for women. This is the most overt challenge to the unisex vision of gender that was trendy for a while — that nothing inherently differentiated men and women aside from a couple various body parts (that could, of course, be swapped out if need be.) The reproductive asymmetry in childbearing is obvious enough, but “The Dignity of Dependence” highlights crash-test dummies, surgical instruments, kitchen counter heights, even college basketball three-point lines to point out that how you set the status quo can respect basic biological difference or attempt to efface it.
Social conservatives who are fed up with “gender ideology” will rightly applaud Sargeant’s pointed observations that building for men means ignoring the needs of women. But the demands she would make on society to fully accommodate those real differences would require a heroic shift in mentality, particularly from those who traditionally favor more limited government. This is a book that very easily could see the Americans with Disabilities Act not as federal overreach into the ability of business owners to operate as they wish, but perhaps as one of the quietly most pro-family pieces of legislation passed in the last half-century, and yet still far short of what should be the goal. Sargeant doesn’t want bare-minimum accommodations, but a rethinking of what inclusion means:
“When I survey the ‘solutions’ and assistive devices women are offered to manage our differences, I see the mark of at best this kind of misguided allyship and at worst open misogyny. When women’s distinctive qualities and capacities are made into disability by being treated as aberrational and unwelcome, women are treated as a problem in need of solution, rather than as people equal in dignity to men. Rather than woman being welcomed as we are, the price of our presence in society is to spend money, time and social capital on cobbling together accessibility tools to move through the world as the imagined archetypical man does.”
She doesn’t want bloodless “care economy” tax credits for child care or dimly-lit “lactation rooms” where new moms are given the bare minimum of minutes to use a breast pump in solitude. She wants babies crawling all over the office, career paths that celebrate and accommodate fertility, and a more candid social recognition that yes, having kids is hard work, and that is why parents should be able to stake a claim to loud, messy social inclusion.
Taken to its fullest extent, this is a bold, near utopian, vision. Like evacuees on the deck of the Titanic, it’s easy to conceptualize why women and children would need particular efforts to be put first in a world built for Rousseauian man — solitary, self-sufficient, unencumbered. And, like the Titanic, changing that cultural and economic reality does not turn on a dime.
Which is why, perhaps counterintuitively, I think I found her sections touching on men, and what they have to bring to the table, perhaps the most intriguing portions of “The Dignity of Dependence.”
Traditionally, the way men helped address the challenges that left women and children vulnerable to the ravages of poverty or violence was putting their bodies on the line — in the fields, on the battlefront, in the factories. It’s harder to channel traditional masculine virtues in the service of hearth and home when the only columns that are advancing are the ones on Excel spreadsheets. In Sargeant’s framing of “Dependence”, able-bodied prime-age men aren’t (usually) called on to physically sacrifice in the same way, they can still seek out opportunities to be depended on — and those are encounters that can help give men shape to their lives in late-stage modernity. “As more of life’s dangers become private and personal, the paradigmatically womanly kind of risk remains present, by the public, shared dangers that formed men’s character and courage become rarer.”
In the act of giving birth, for example, women have no choice but to labor, but men can tap into their physical strength to provide support, fetch supplies, take care of early morning diaper changes. Going through childbirth with her husband supporting her, she relates, “My body flexed and heaved without my willing — his strength came by choosing.” A framework of explicit acknowledgment of dependence, maybe, can give more men the opportunity to put their own bodies or comforts on the line in the service of others. And don’t forget even the most independent Lockean being will find himself in need of someone to help him navigate the world, get from place to place, change his adult diapers.
The more we can build in recognition that the ideal of total self-sufficiency is a myth, and an undesirable one at that, the better job we will do at building a society in which those who are not fully “self-sufficient” are welcomed rather than forgotten about. Like the late Alastair MacIntyre, whose intellectual influence is heavily felt throughout the book, Sargeant offers an uncompromising, principled application of what authentic justice – for women and mothers, for children, for the elderly – might require. Like Hadestown’s Orpheus, she sees “the way the world could be, in spite of the way that it is.” No one engaging with Sargeant’s book will find themselves agreeing with every single example or thought experiment – but they will not run out of ideas or provocations with which to grapple.
For more, read Leah’s interview at Public Discourse with Alexandra Davis; her interview with Charles Camosy at Our Sunday Visitor; Agnes R. Howard’s review at Christianity Today; Nathanael Blake’s review at The Federalist; and an especially insightful double review by Valerie Stivers of “The Dignity of Dependence” and Corinne Low‘s “Having It All” (Unherd)
Apartments for Families
One of the long-running beefs in intramural conservative disagreements is over the correct valence of YIMBY energies. Some in the pro-natalist camp, like Daniel Hess, who goes by @MoreBirths on Twitter, have taken the strongest version possible of the thesis that upzoning is anti-natal — they look at cities like Tokyo or Singapore and worry that a heavily urban environment is prophylactic. The push from this corner has been for more housing, but only of a particular type — standalone, single-family homes.
There’s certainly nothing wrong building with single-family homes, but in most major cities, the availability of land for big tracts of traditional suburban subdivisions is pretty scant, which limits their applicability for solving the affordability problems of urban (and many suburban) neighborhoods. As such, I have long held the view that our housing affordability crisis requires an all-of-the-above approach, rather than being particular about only permitting standalone houses.
A new report from Lyman Stone, who has also been concerned about the anti-natal effects of upzoning, and Bobby Fijan, a real estate developer seemingly single-handedly trying to turn the attention of his industry to the needs of actual parents, is a welcome intervention.
The whole report is worth a read, both for its discussion of the structural trends and the large-n survey of apartment preferences they executed. One of their big takeaways is that beyond any other amenity, the number of bedrooms in a unit had the biggest influence on the willingness to have another child. And they find suggestive evidence that developers and landlords should prefer families as renters to other types of households, given they are less mobile and less financially risky (well, until the kids start drawing on the walls with Sharpies…) And anyone who has argued that allowing apartments to be built is inherently anti-family should amend their future arguments in light of this very readable report.
The one point I want to underscore is that the lack of family-sized apartments they rightly decry is downstream from the policy choices that make it more difficult to build. If a developer knows it is restricted in how big a building it can provide, its shortest path to profit-maximization will lie in cramming in a bunch of small apartments, rather than “waste” space on less-lucrative multi-bedrooms ones2 — and in a housing shortage, there will be plenty of takers. I would also second Stone+Fijan’s suggestion to switch parking requirements from “per-bedroom” to “per-unit,” both on family-friendly as well as on modestly urbanist grounds.
Who Cares?
In the policy world, there are disappointingly few opportunities to delve into first principles discussions around what families are, what care means, and how those insights should influence the design of our public policies. But a few brave writers and thinkers create space for those kind of far-reaching conversations, and I was so thrilled to spend some answering some questions from Elissa Strauss, author of “When You Care: The Unexpected Magic of Caring for Others,” on her Substack, MADE WITH CARE.
In a sense, this interview just scratched the surface of where these talks could go — Elissa was generous enough to ask me a wide range of questions and turn me loose. But hopefully it offers a glimpse into how I structure my thoughts around the goals of family policy, and suggests some jumping-off points where left, right, and center might find areas to work together towards some of these goals.
It’s Me, Hi
As if the photo album wasn’t enough, the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of Policy Development and Research has uploaded the video of last month’s quarterly research update on housing and family formation, on which I participated with Alison Bell, Eric Cochling, Tim Johnson, and Brad Wilcox (panel discussion begins at 45:25):
And I spoke to Hollie McKay about the plans that presumptive favorite in the New York mayoral election, Zohran Mamdani, has for child care in NYC (New York Sun):
A fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, Patrick Brown, cautions that the evidence tying child care costs to fertility decline is “pretty slim”…Mr. Brown also warns that “universal child care only provides benefits to parents who want to use child care — meaning parents who want to work flexible hours or stay home don’t receive the same level of public support.”
Parting Shots
Wesley J. Smith highlights the successful trial of turning human skin cells into human eggs, and fertilized them using IVF. He asks if there is “any reproductive desire about which radical technologists and regulators will finally say, ‘No, that is too much, goes too far, is socially destabilizing, and too expensive’…[or] all ethical boundaries are being erased.” (National Review Online)
Sarah El Haïry, France’s high commissioner for children, has threatened legal action against online booking platforms promoting adults-only holidays and plans to introduce a government-backed label for child-friendly establishments—a “Michelin for children”—by the end of the year.
The Food and Drug Administration approved a generic version of mifepristone, the drug used for self-induced chemical abortions, a move that EPPC President Ryan T. Anderson called “a giant mistake.”
Tu-Uyen Tran has written a report on the high share of families who rely on family, friends, and neighbor-provided child care in the Midwest (Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis)
Shefali Luthra reports on a new poll that finds only 2 percent of Americans say abortion is their top political concern, down from 7 percent a year ago (The 19th)
In 2022, 34 percent of Americans thought sports betting was a bad thing for society. That is now up to 43 percent, per the Pew Research Center.
Rachel Cohen Booth reports on how the recently-announced tariffs on home furnishings, like cabinets, furniture, and bathroom vanities, will complicate the administration’s efforts to make housing more affordable (Vox)
Some key points from Ryan Burge about the growing gender divergence on politics and culture, highlighting that young women are significantly more progressive than young men, both within ideological camps and across them:
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There was no organic way to weave a mini-review into today’s newsletter, but for the diehards: The Life of a Showgirl is a dramatic correction — mayyyybe even an slight overcorrection — after the athmospheric murk of Midnights and the sprawling angst of The Tortured Poets Department. It’s what they might call a “tight set” in show biz — 12 songs, no more, written during her record-setting Eras Tour, revolving around life in the spotlight.
Taylor Swift returns to working with Max Martin, the Swedish producer who helped her initial transition from country to chart-topping hits. Showgirl leans heavily into fairly conventional pop beats, at times veering close to Sabrina Carpenter territory (who shares the final, title track). The album’s aggressive pop hooks are destined to get plenty of heads bopping, particularly in “The Fate of Ophelia” and “Opalite.” Showgirl is something of a spiritual heir to 2017’s Reputation, but this version of Swift is (largely) not out for revenge, counseling her listeners to eschew social media chatter, and kissing off her rivals with a hope that they “get what they want,” while she focuses on the football hunk who swept her off her feet. Relationship dramas and heartbreaks have given way to hopeful, exuberant, even goofy, love songs, as in the innuendo-laden “Wood.” Taylor is an adult now, confident, in love with less the giddiness of a teenager and more with the self-assurance of “a girl who had everything, and nothing” until being saved from melancholy by her husband-to-be. It’s an album that anyone rooting for the happy couple can find reason to jam out to.
A relatively straightforward policy tweak would be to give density bonuses to developers — on lots where they could normally build a five-story dwelling, they could receive expedited permitting for a seven-story building so long as a given percentage of the units built were designed and designated as family-friendly.