Why subscribe?
MADE W ITH CARE is a newsletter and community for people who dream of a world in which parenting and caregiving isn’t only valued and supported, but treated with the curiosity and fascination they deserve. I’m obsessed with understanding how parenting and caregiving—dependency care—got left out of nearly all of our meaning-making systems. Also, I consider what it means to give parenting and caregiving the major plot line status it deserves in our individual and collective lives.
MADE WITH CARE is written by me, Elissa Strauss, journalist and book author with over 18 years of experience covering the intersections between motherhood, care, feminism, culture and policy.
All subscribers get:
A monthly timely essay contemplating the culture surrounding parenting and caregiving.
An monthly interview with an expert on subjects connected to parenting and caregiving—and dependency more broadly. These won’t necessarily be with famous people, or people promoting something, but people who have interests and opinions about subjects I think deserve to be better understood.
A monthly list of mini book, film and article reviews and recommendations. I want to make sure to spread the word of all the amazing motherhood, fatherhood and caregiving books and films that are popping up, and offer a personal endorsement for those which expanded me, intellectually, psychologically and emotionally.
A cross-post from one of my favorite Substackers. I’ll share with you a probably recent, but possibly quite old, post that really stuck with me by another writer.
Paid subscribers will also gain access to seminars and workshops including:
Deep dives into the policy, history, culture and ethics of care alongside brilliant thinkers, writers and scholars. (Paid subscribers only.)
Writing workshops about how to craft a care story, be it motherhood or eldercare—a relatively new narrative genre. (Paid subscribers only.)
Every annual paid subscriber will receive a free hard copy of my book, “When You Care: The Unexpected Magic of Caring for Others” delivered to them.
A bit more about me:
There are many policy experts about the care crisis — and boy do I appreciate every single one of them. I consider myself a culture expert on the care crisis, and there are far fewer of us.
I spent nearly five years digging deep into how parenting and caregiving was rendered a footnote of the human story — as well as the many thinkers, feelers and dreamers who have tried to give it the major plot point status it deserves. I wove this research together with my personal story as well as the stories of a wide variety of other parents and caregivers, paid and unpaid, in my new book “When You Care: The Unexpected Magic of Caring for Others.” In it, I dig into the cultural roots of the care crisis and show just how powerful care is in the lives of individuals and societies.
In this newsletter, I will continue the project I began in my book, and uncover just how blind we are to care in all of our meaning-making systems. Philosophy, psychology, theology, story-telling, economics, and theories of liberation including my beloved feminism, all have giant care-shaped gaps in them! We will never adequately support parents and caregivers until we change this.
Subscribe if you want to better understand how often we fail to see the power of parenting and caregiving as people and as a culture, and what happens when we do. There will be interviews with some of the smartest care big thinkers out there, summaries of recent humanities and social science research on care, as well as personal stories in which care is the BIG EVENT.
Take care! Give care!
Elissa
