‘Domestic labor is the most essential labor’

A Q&A with author Laura Danger on questioning the status quo and making care work visible

I’m writing this from the luxury of a hotel room, which I’ve booked for a personal writing retreat to make space for my commitment to this newsletter (and myself). If I were at home, I’d have all the same hours to do this work — but I’d never take them. I’d squeeze it into insufficient stolen moments that don’t honor how much it matters to me. Instead, I’d fill my hours with cleaning the bathroom, buying groceries, vacuuming the den, doing the laundry, cooking meals, and — probably more than anything — simply worrying about what else my household needs that I’m not attending to enough. Or I’d worry about my sister’s kids or my parents or what I should be doing to serve my community better.

Why are women’s lives like this? Even in my household, with no children and a feminist partner, my brain defaults to caretaker mode so strongly that I have to leave town to (kind of) turn it off.

This is why I found myself nodding along fervently while reading a new book by Laura Danger, an author, educator and domestic equity expert. Laura’s work focuses on care work, household labor and building more equitable relationships. Her book, No More Mediocre: A Call to Reimagine Our Relationships and Demand More, looks into how we’ve gotten where we are and sets out to unpack the erasure of domestic labor and care to guide readers toward a healthier and more balanced life.

I invited Laura to talk about how we can make domestic and care work more visible and how to work toward relationships and communities and that value it more fairly — plus a look at her personal relationship with work and money.

You note that a 2019 study found if stay-at-home mothers were compensated for their labor, they’d command a median annual salary of $178,201. Putting a dollar amount to domestic labor is an imperfect science and an imperfect argument, but, as you point out, “money is what speaks in our society.”

Why do you think it’s important to measure domestic labor with the same metrics as paid labor — and where do you think that comparison breaks down and keeps us from truly understanding domestic labor as equally valuable to capitalist production?

Domestic labor is the most essential labor. Nothing runs without it. In a productivity-obsessed system, the more productivity companies can squeeze out of their employees, the better. As long as domestic labor is downgraded, lumped into “just what women do,” expected as an effort of love, or otherwise separated from paid work, it remains exploitable. The bosses don’t get held accountable for it.

Theorists like Silvia Federici and others who dig into social reproduction theory have articulated this powerfully, but the reality is that when wages are low, when landlords fail to maintain properties while hiking rent and when politicians write policies that stretch families thin, domestic labor is what makes up the difference. It’s creative meal planning, home repairs, mending clothes, coupon cutting, stain-treating so garments can be handed down. Domestic workers are tasked with turning what little they’re given by their bosses into a life.

If we truly valued that work that sustained our lives and recognized how much effort and energy it requires, especially when it’s expected of all people and not just women, it would become clear how distorted our priorities are. Valuing care pokes holes in dominant cultural narratives about what makes a good life, particularly the idea that we should always be earning more so we can buy and consume more, with our eyes fixed on a prize tied solely to paid work.

For people who align with traditional roles and may not fully grasp the weight of domestic and care work, simply saying “this work matters” can feel like too big a leap. Using a familiar metric like money can help bridge that gap. Saying “This work adds nearly $200,000 of value to a household” makes the point in terms people already understand. Any incremental shift toward seeing the work clearly is worthwhile — even as we hold the nuance that, ideally, money should not be our primary measure of value.

What’s the most joyful thing you’ve done with money in the past six(ish) months?

I’ve been making intentional financial shifts to better align my spending with my values. I unsubscribed from streaming platforms and service subscriptions and added a 24– to 48-hour waiting period before making purchases to curb impulse buying. The result has been more room in our budget to contribute to hyper-local resource redistribution in my neighborhood. Rather than spending money frivolously, I’ve kept it in my community, through direct financial support, shopping local whenever possible and eating at restaurants we can walk to [in Chicago].

What messages did you get about money growing up? Which have you held onto and which have you let go?

I’m grateful to have received a strong financial education from a young age. My parents taught me how to spend, save, manage credit and make informed decisions about debt. I still closely monitor my income and debt and adjust my lifestyle to make sure my spending aligns with my values and feels sustainable in the long term. I absolutely cannot stand the idea of wasting money. I want it to be useful. I’m always willing to carve out time to negotiate utility bills, review medical invoices line by line and shop around for better prices. That time feels well spent to me, keeps our costs down and stretches our dollars so we can spend them more intentionally.

How do various facets of your identity impact your work and finances?

Money is deeply wrapped up with identity. In the U.S., my whiteness has significantly shaped my financial reality. I come from parents who attended college, owned their home and came from families who also owned homes. As a white woman, I’ve benefited from generational wealth and countless forms of protection — from positive assumptions to access to education. As a woman, I was encouraged into a caring profession (teaching), which is female-dominated and notoriously underpaid. Many care-centered fields follow that same pattern.

As a mother, the cost of child care has been astronomical and has influenced where we live, the jobs we’ve taken and how we negotiate our schedules. Being two working parents with two kids under four was incredibly challenging and expensive. When COVID hit, our kids were 9 months and 3 years old, and the pressure eventually led my husband to leave self-employment for a full-time job, and me to leave my full-time role to pivot professionally.

Child care and health insurance costs have been some of the most influential forces shaping our family’s financial decisions.

What’s one financial decision that frequently causes you stress? How do you work through it?

Our home seems to constantly need major, expensive repairs. We own an old Chicago house that we absolutely love, but we’ve learned that our savings can’t reliably cover “fun” things like vacations. After being blindsided more than once (for example, a recent $18,000 boiler and chimney replacement), we now earmark a large portion of our savings specifically for maintenance and repairs. I get anxious when savings are depleted faster than expected and take time to recover. We’ve adjusted our day-to-day lifestyle costs to make sure we’re rebuilding consistently, but it’s a lingering stress as I wonder what large unexpected cost could be lurking around any corner.

Besides yours, what work or culture books or other media do you most recommend and why? Who is it best for?

When it comes to money, I’ve gotten a lot out of Ellyce Fulmore’s Keeping Finances Personal, and I love Alyssa Davies of Mixed Up Money. But some of the most impactful shifts for me have come from reframing how I think about wealth itself. Robin Wall Kimmerer’s work has completely transformed how I understand consumption and connection. Braiding Sweetgrass is a powerful, transformative read, and her more recent book, The Serviceberry, is shorter and more accessible while covering many of the same themes. Reading about social and political systems, global economies, and historical and ongoing oppression has shaped not just how I spend money, but how I spend my time and energy.

Instead of talking about the weather, what do you wish strangers would ask you about when you meet on the street?

One of my favorite conversation starters is asking people to imagine where they were on a Friday night when they were 16. Who were they with? Were they at home, at a party, driving around listening to music?

It’s a playful way to get to know someone as they reflect on who they were when they were just starting to figure themselves out. Those conversations often lead to what has or hasn’t changed, spark ideas about revisiting old hobbies, or turn into nerding out about a longtime favorite band. I’d much rather talk about what makes us who we are than the weather or even what we do for a living.

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