“Other countries have social safety nets. The U.S. has women.”

That’s sociologist Jessica Calarco speaking with journalist Anne Helen Petersen in a widely shared interview from 2020. Today, she joins Tuesday host Ali Muldrow to talk about the unique challenges of parenting in the U.S., why so much care work (still) disproportionately falls to women, and the deeply unequal structures that perpetuate the gendered and racial dynamics of caregiving.

Jessica Calarco is an associate professor of sociology at Indiana University, where her research focuses on systems of inequality. She is the author of Negotiating Opportunities: How the Middle Class Secures Advantages in School (Oxford University Press, 2018) and A Field Guide to Grad School: Uncovering the Hidden Curriculum (Princeton University Press, 2020). Her forthcoming book, Without a Net, is about why the U.S. does not have an adequate social safety net—and what we lose without it.

Cover photo by charlesdeluvio on Unsplash

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