In researching care work, have a problem with falling down the rabbit holes of history. You already know this, since I keep rambling on about medieval disability studies.
Robert Putnam's Making Democracy Work, which is ostensibly a study of how different regional governments in Italy fared after being launched with the same framework and mandates that contains a deep dive into medieval Italy and the French Revolution, has helped me justify my inability to resist long tangents.
Not only has Putnam helped me rationalize my irrational behavior, he's validating my existing beliefs. That is, it works if you're me and you connect literally everything to the history of care work, even the Italian political system.
Traveling around North America for the past few years has led me to conclude that the key to surviving the role of caregiving is, alas, not an app. It's also not a caregiver support group. Or a nonprofit to teach self care. Or care navigation programs. Or even quasi-affordable respite care.
The most effective “intervention” is being enmeshed in the greater community. Those community connections could be through church or a bird-watching group or an informal bar meetup or the kink community, it doesn't matter. It's about having people who notice when something is up and feel comfortable inserting themselves into your personal business. It’s having friends you can talk to and acquaintances to connect you with the support you need. It’s being tied into a web of interdependence, rather than feeling like a charity case.
Putnam's extended research into the effectiveness of regional governments in Italy found that the secret sauce to good government is community. Social groups led to civic engagement.
“Honesty, trust, and law-abidingness are prominent in most philosophical accounts of civic virtue. Citizens in the civic community, it is said, deal fairly with one another and expect fair dealing in return. They expect their government to follow high standards, and they willingly obey the rules that they have imposed on themselves. In such a community, writes Benjamin Barber, ‘Citizens do not and cannot ride for free, because they understand that their freedom is a consequence of their participation in the making and acting out of common decisions.’ In a less civic community, by comparison, life is riskier, citizens are warier, and the laws, made by higher-ups, are made to be broken.”
Perhaps the lack of trust in America is why we can't have nice things. (And by “nice things” I mean paying family caregivers and providing decent working conditions to professional caregivers).
“Collective life in the civic regions is eased by the expectation that others will probably follow the rules. Knowing that others will, you are more likely to go along, too, thus fulfilling their expectations. In the less civic regions nearly everyone expects everyone else to violate the rules. It seems foolish to obey the traffic laws or the tax code or the welfare rules, if you expect everyone else to cheat. (The Italian term for such naive behavior is fesso, which also means ‘cuckolded.’) So you cheat, too, and in the end everyone’s dolorous, cynical expectations are confirmed.”
Unfortunately, it often seems that America is a country where only the foolish pay taxes and follow the rules. Alas, as I whine to friends about my tax trouble in Canada, they keep laughing at me for declaring my freelance income. By declaring it, I’ve invited the CRA to give me a hard time.
This is why when programs to support family caregivers exist, they are often designed with the expectation that everyone is attempting to commit fraud, that we are all trying to lie our way into getting more than we deserve. Layers of eligibility requirements, proof of dire financial need, ongoing invasive requirements are the terms we demand for caregivers and the disabled to access wildly inadequate supports.
There's a popular notion that in small towns people trust each other and take care of their own. Thus, caregiving isn't a problem. Or maybe it’s hardest to be a caregiver in small towns, due to the lack of services. People tell me it’s one extreme or the other. Since I'd spent a few years studying care work in North American cities, my plan for the spring of 2020 was to buy a car and study small towns and “traditional” communities. Obviously, I did not end up taking the car ferry to Newfoundland.
Putnam’s work suggests that I might have found those horror stories to be more accurate.
“The combination of impoverishment and mutual distrust forestalled horizontal solidarity and fostered what Banfield has called ‘amoral familism’.”
In communities practicing amoral familism, people “Maximize the material short-run advantage of the nuclear family, and assume that all others will do likewise.” We take care of our own and no one else. Even in these communities, people remain tied together.
“The relevant distinction is not between the presence and absence of social bonds, but rather between horizontal bonds of mutual solidarity and vertical bonds of dependency and exploitation. The southerner…has sought refuge in vertical bonds of patronage and clientelism, employed for both economic and political ends”
“For wretchedly vulnerable peasants, recourse to patron-client ties was a sensible response to an atomized society…In the absence of horizontal solidarity, as exemplified by mutual aid societies, vertical dependence is a rational strategy for survival – even when those who are dependent recognize its drawbacks.”
Of course, present day North America is not Italy in the 1970s and 80s. I suspect that there’s more to the ways a community is connected than the number of people who live there. There are plenty of neighborhoods in major metropolises that feel like small towns and plenty of small towns that are simply a place to sleep and store things. Putnam’s work suggests there are historic reasons for this.
I've come to view time banks as training wheels for community building. Time banks help people understand the gifts they have to share. They provide a framework to try out helping your neighbors and getting involved in each other's lives. With time, successful time bank experiences build ties that continue organically, without the accounting of time banking. Reading Making Democracy Work, I wonder if my thoughts on the transformative power of time banks are hopelessly naive.
If you join your local time bank, you'll see that many of the requests and offers are the sort of casual work we often provide to our neighbors and friends. Help with gardening and putting furniture together. Proof reading and running errands. Normal neighborly acts if you live in a place where people get involved in each other's lives, that is.
Going back to the medieval era, “mutual aid societies provided a locally organized, underfunded, self-help version of what the twentieth century would call the welfare state.”
Mutual aid associations were not necessarily a representation of idealistic altruism. Rather, “mutual aid societies represented collective solidarity in the face of the economic insecurities peculiar to the modern age.”
There’s been a resurgence of mutual aid during the pandemic. We’ll find out if it’s something we’re capable of.
Here's what I'd love to know: Are cooperative societies more likely to have official caregiver support programs? Are they more likely to have mutual aid that renders official support unnecessary?
And here's the bigger question: How do communities shift from amoral familism into cooperation?
Given that Putnam's book is Making Democracy Work and Caitlyn Collins's comparative study of maternity leave policies is Making Motherhood Work, I think we all know the title I'm obligated to go with if I fall all the way down the rabbit hole.
A very long-running Harvard study suggests that the strength of ties to family, friends, and the community are linked to health.
If you’re interested in finding a time bank near you, check out HourWorld.
If you're in the US, the Community Care Corps has an RFP for "innovative local models where volunteers provide nonmedical assistance to older adults, adults with disabilities, or family caregivers to help them maintain their independence." If you're curious, there's a webinar on June 3rd.
If you're in the US, Caring Across Generations is recruiting care fellows.
If you're in Canada, PLAN has a free disability planning helpline.
ARD has a guide to unlearning ableism.