In today’s show, host Ali Muldrow talks with sociology professor Jessica Calarco about how women are shaped by multiple forces in our society to take up the role of mother, of homemaker, and of caregiver. They discuss how, from a young age, girls are trained to put others first, and to do emotional labor. That training spills over into adulthood, where ideas of gender shape the workplace, the division of labor in the family, and how people feel fulfilled. And in the end, women provide much of the labor that enables the public policy choices in the United States, acting as the true safety net for so many people.

Jessica Calarco is a professor of sociology at UW-Madison. She has a new book “Holding it Together: How Women Became America’s Safety Net.” In it, she recounts the patterns she observed in interviews with over 4000 parents over five years, and then traces those patterns back to public policies that have left so much care work to women.

Image courtesy of Penguin Random House.

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