#89 Wrestling is Part of It: Care Ethics, Motherhood, Embodiment & the Meaning in Dependency with Journalist Elissa Strauss

Send a love messageWhy Caring Isn't Self-Sacrifice with Elissa StraussThe episode of Love and Philosophy introduces a conversation with journalist and essayist Elissa Strauss, author of When You Care: The Unexpected Magic of Caring for Others, framed by the host’s view of care as an embodied, orienting force and “minds as actions.” Strauss distinguishes “caring,” social-status “not caring,” collective/kumbaya care, and “dependency care,” which she calls a “Hotel California” relationship you can’t easily exit; she argues dependency care is fraught, messy, and misunderstood when treated as pure altruism. She describes moving from fast-paced feminist journalism and a policy lens on U.S. caregiving failures (including lack of federal paid leave) to a deeper account of motherhood’s embodied realities, attention, and moments of union and estrangement with children. The discussion links care ethics (Gilligan, Noddings, Kittay) with Iris Murdoch and Simone Weil on unselfing and attention, critiques binary labels that assume we are all always one thing or the other related to ideas like “trad wife,” explores caring-for versus caring-about and the “glass door” separating home from public value, and connects care to economics, interdependence, faith as “wrestling,” and intergenerational “sandwich” caregiving.Elissa's Book When You CareElissa's Substack: https://elissa.substack.com/We All Carethe Navigational Approach to MindHeat by H.D.Care of Things episode mentioned here00:00 Trad Wife Label00:48 Embodied Parenting01:55 Estrangement Moments02:57 Care Philosophy Intro05:25 Care Ethics Primer09:35 Care Economics Value11:55 Poem Heat Reading17:18 Defining Care Buckets19:19 Dependency Care Explained22:20 Writing Career Origins25:53 Motherhood Identity Shift30:32 Beyond Binary Labels33:15 Embodied Early Motherhood33:52 Embodied Early Motherhood36:18 Attention and Listening39:00 Touch Versus Screens42:27 Dependency Care Awakening46:25 Unselfing as Parenting North Star49:54 Estrangement and Return52:39 Faith as Wrestling55:45 Finding Care Ethics01:00:21 Gilligan Noddings Validation01:05:46 Caring For Versus About01:08:16 Shame and the Glass Door01:09:44 Glass Door Feminism01:10:48 Care Work Counts01:13:00 Tradwife Backlash01:15:12 Money Meets Meaning01:16:19 Care Beyond Maintenance01:20:47 Home Everywhere Politics01:25:05 Figure Eight Care01:27:42 Parenting as Process01:31:51 Love Clarity and Illusion01:35:54 Sandwich Caregiving Crunch01:41:08 Wired to Care Together01:43:55 Closing and Where to FindCare EthicsAndrea Hiott is a philosopher and cognitive scientist developing the navigational approach to mind — the view that mind is “the body’s navigational action in all spaces of life, from the geographical to the emotional to the social to the virtual.” She hosts the Love & Philosophy (Beyond Dichotomy) podcast and Substack, and her work draws on hippocampal research, 4E cognition (embodied, embedded, extended, enactive), and the ecological tradition. Her book Holding Paradox: A Navigational Approach to Mind and Consciousness is forthcoming. Her recurring interests — holding apparent contradictions open, “way-making,” the importance of care and 'mattering', constellation/kaleidoscopic thinking, and moving beyond either/or — frame her questions throughout.Support the showBuy Holding Paradox: The Navigational Approach to Mind and Consciousness by Andrea HiottSign up for Making Ways newsletter and projects.Please rate and review with love. YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Substack.