Casting care work as easy work that anyone can do alone is a way of justifying the undervaluation, and underpayment, of carers. By naturalizing the work of caregiving and raising children, society can obscure and mystify what it actually is: the infrastructure propping up capitalism. Without workers, there is no work. The largest section of our economies is actually unpaid labor. In 2016, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) found that the value of unpaid childcare—mothering, fathering, parenting—was £351.7 billion. Overall, unpaid household service work was equivalent to 63.1 percent of
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