I want to normalize personal economic interdependence. American culture has too much bought into the idea that one’s worth as a person is based on one’s level of financial independence. I’m thinking specifically about the discourse that floated around the internet recently about whether helping friends move is a good or bad phenomenon, but I’m extending it to financial support. Let’s instead embrace the idea that life is full of situations where you are dependent on others for a season, and opportunities to provide financially for others who are dependent on you for a season. Examples:

1. Children and the elderly. Isn’t it great that almost everybody gets to spend part of their life independent with the capacity to care for others, and part of their life dependent on others? Yes, you can save for your own old age, but nobody gets to skip childhood. The fact that almost everybody is on both sides of the independent / dependent line at some point in their lives is pretty great and important. It bothers me the degree to which modern people think of children or aging parents as a burden imposing on their lives. It’s an opportunity, and you too get to experience seasons like that.
2. Disability. Now, I’m less familiar with this. But it’s clear to me that alongside the other disadvantages disabled people experience, it only makes things worse if society says your value is based on your independence.
3. Stay-at-home mothers. I was talking to my sister today, who shared that she used to be embarrassed by the fact that she is dependent on her husband financially, and she is recently learning to embrace it. I think one of the worst things about our society is that it even crosses our minds to think one’s value is dependent on where one is in relationship to the producer/consumer economy. The fact that caring for children (if they are your own—remember that for paid caregivers this is a full-time job) would ever occur to us to be less important than e.g. working for an employer.
4. General opportunities opened up by thinking in terms of households rather than individuals. Also from my conversation with my sister: on the side of caring for her son, she is able to pursue artistic endeavors (a precarious situation if you need it for income) enabled by her husband’s stable job. This is wonderful. We should really embrace the idea that downstream from the fact that marriage is making two people one, is the reality that together, husband and wife have twice as many hours in the day to pursue good things. My sister and her husband are in this together: together, they make his stable income, care for their son, and make art. There is nothing wrong with the fact that the hours doing those things are split differently between them.

I could think up more examples, but that’s enough for today. That last point about thinking in terms of households and the various opportunities opened up by households both for experimenting with new endeavors and for caring for others in need, is the foundation for how I’ve been trying to think about the world nowadays.