#89 Wrestling is Part of It: Care Ethics, Motherhood, Embodiment & the Meaning in Dependency with Journalist Elissa Strauss

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Why Caring Isn't Self-Sacrifice with Elissa Strauss

The episode of Love and Philosophy introduces a conversation with journalist and essayist Elissa Strauss, author of When You Care: The Unexpected Magic of Caring for Others, framed by the host’s view of care as an embodied, orienting force and “minds as actions.” Strauss distinguishes “caring,” social-status “not caring,” collective/kumbaya care, and “dependency care,” which she calls a “Hotel California” relationship you can’t easily exit; she argues dependency care is fraught, messy, and misunderstood when treated as pure altruism. She describes moving from fast-paced feminist journalism and a policy lens on U.S. caregiving failures (including lack of federal paid leave) to a deeper account of motherhood’s embodied realities, attention, and moments of union and estrangement with children. The discussion links care ethics (Gilligan, Noddings, Kittay) with Iris Murdoch and Simone Weil on unselfing and attention, critiques binary labels that assume we are all always one thing or the other related to ideas like “trad wife,” explores caring-for versus caring-about and the “glass door” separating home from public value, and connects care to economics, interdependence, faith as “wrestling,” and intergenerational “sandwich” caregiving.

Elissa's Book When You Care
Elissa's Substack: https://elissa.substack.com/

We All Care

the Navigational Approach to Mind
Heat by H.D.

Care of Things episode mentioned here

00:00 Trad Wife Label
00:48 Embodied Parenting
01:55 Estrangement Moments
02:57 Care Philosophy Intro
05:25 Care Ethics Primer
09:35 Care Economics Value
11:55 Poem Heat Reading
17:18 Defining Care Buckets
19:19 Dependency Care Explained
22:20 Writing Career Origins
25:53 Motherhood Identity Shift
30:32 Beyond Binary Labels
33:15 Embodied Early Motherhood
33:52 Embodied Early Motherhood
36:18 Attention and Listening
39:00 Touch Versus Screens
42:27 Dependency Care Awakening
46:25 Unselfing as Parenting North Star
49:54 Estrangement and Return
52:39 Faith as Wrestling
55:45 Finding Care Ethics
01:00:21 Gilligan Noddings Validation
01:05:46 Caring For Versus About
01:08:16 Shame and the Glass Door
01:09:44 Glass Door Feminism
01:10:48 Care Work Counts
01:13:00 Tradwife Backlash
01:15:12 Money Meets Meaning
01:16:19 Care Beyond Maintenance
01:20:47 Home Everywhere Politics
01:25:05 Figure Eight Care
01:27:42 Parenting as Process
01:31:51 Love Clarity and Illusion
01:35:54 Sandwich Caregiving Crunch
01:41:08 Wired to Care Together
01:43:55 Closing and Where to Find

Care Ethics

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