"To nourish children and raise them against odds is in any time, any place, is more valuable than to fix bolts in cars or design nuclear weapons"
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French draws blood with a simple comparison: the work that keeps children alive and resilient gets treated as less “real” than the work that builds machines or perfects destruction. The line is structured like an indictment of modern prestige economies. “Fix bolts in cars” is deliberately prosaic, a stand-in for honest, skilled labor that still earns clearer wages, status, and measurable outputs. “Design nuclear weapons” spikes the contrast: the most socially sanctioned “genius” can be lethal, yet it enjoys institutional respect. Between those poles sits caregiving, the labor that reproduces society itself, routinely unpaid or underpaid, and culturally framed as natural instinct rather than expertise.
Her intent isn’t to romanticize parenting; it’s to revalue it. “Against odds” is the quiet center of gravity. French is writing in the long shadow of second-wave feminism, when women were being told to “have it all” while the state and workplace largely refused to reorganize around care. The odds are economic precarity, sexism, racism, disability, war, addiction, the daily drag of systems that make families improvise survival. In that terrain, nourishing and raising a child becomes not a private lifestyle choice but a form of social infrastructure.
The subtext is political: if we measured value by human outcomes rather than market salaries or technological spectacle, caregiving would sit at the top of the ledger. French’s rhetorical move forces an uncomfortable question: why do we reward the maintenance of machines more reliably than the maintenance of people, and why does a society call itself advanced while outsourcing its future to exhausted, invisible labor?
Her intent isn’t to romanticize parenting; it’s to revalue it. “Against odds” is the quiet center of gravity. French is writing in the long shadow of second-wave feminism, when women were being told to “have it all” while the state and workplace largely refused to reorganize around care. The odds are economic precarity, sexism, racism, disability, war, addiction, the daily drag of systems that make families improvise survival. In that terrain, nourishing and raising a child becomes not a private lifestyle choice but a form of social infrastructure.
The subtext is political: if we measured value by human outcomes rather than market salaries or technological spectacle, caregiving would sit at the top of the ledger. French’s rhetorical move forces an uncomfortable question: why do we reward the maintenance of machines more reliably than the maintenance of people, and why does a society call itself advanced while outsourcing its future to exhausted, invisible labor?
Quote Details
| Topic | Parenting |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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