I’m still on the road! I’ll be speaking in Shoreview, Minnesota this Saturday. Should be pretty reachable from the Twin Cities! And I’ve been reviewed by
for First Things. She paired my The Dignity of Dependence with Tim Jackson’s The Care Economy. I particularly loved this in her review:Her argument is human-scale, and her tone conversational. Reading her feels like being drawn into discussion among a circle of warm and thoughtful friends, for whom the broader context is taken for granted. Sargeant blends personal anecdote with policy discussion and cultural commentary. She aims to free “dignity” from its thin modern sense of proud self-reliance, and “dependence” from its connotation of shame (a connotation especially strong in the culture that celebrates the Fourth of July). The resulting book is something akin to a phenomenology of everyday vulnerability and love.
While I’ve been giving book talks, I’ve gotten a range of questions. Some are from attendees mostly in alignment, with practical questions about how to put the ideas into practice. Others are from people much more skeptical of my basic premises.
At the Harvard Catholic Chaplaincy, one student asked me: “Isn’t it better if someone’s parent can be cared for by hired help? It seems more dignified for them and for their kid.”
And I answered, “When a little kid has a nanny, does that restore a dignity the mother and child previously lacked?”
He said no, though he wasn’t fully convinced the cases were equivalent.
Elsewhere, I got to have a longer back and forth when
invited me to debate Ann Furedi. Ann is the former chief executive of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, the largest abortion provider in the UK.
I’m very pleased that one listener said:
This was the most calm, thoughtful, respectful debate on abortion I’ve ever heard. Really well done.
Full credit to Ann, who approached our disagreement focused on truth-seeking.
Today, I taped another structured disagreement, this time with Helen Andrews on her “Great Feminization” argument. Her contention:
All of us depend on a functioning legal system, and, to be blunt, the rule of law will not survive the legal profession becoming majority female. The rule of law is not just about writing rules down. It means following them even when they yield an outcome that tugs at your heartstrings or runs contrary to your gut sense of which party is more sympathetic.
Stay tuned…
And as you read The Dignity of Dependence, I’d love to hear about passages or ideas you’re still turning over in your head.
I've read it twice now, and struggle to review it because my emotions are so mixed. Obviously - well, it's obvious to me - your fundamental point is true. We are all dependent and we should face it, embrace that, incorporate it into our thinking and planning, and stop worshipping the god of autonomy. I am a big fan of the book and am cheerful about reviewing it positively elsewhere. Here, though, I'd like to add some other thoughts.
It is our job as parents to allow and encourage our children become independent of us, and if we haven't, we have failed. I don't think you disagree, I just think that the book doesn't parse the correct need for gaining independence along with its evil twin of worshipping autonomy.
Then there is poverty. During the many graduate student years where I often needed help and rarely could offer any, I came to hate asking for help, even when it was cheerfully offered and given. I didn't want to always be the dependent one. I wanted at least some opportunity to be the giver, and I was thrilled when financial independence finally offered that opportunity. But what of the families, and for that matter, the nations, who see no end to their dependency, and have no other recourse in need except to ask for help, over and over and over and over... They hate it, and the whole thing is not dignified. Could it be? And if so, what has to change? We are required to be generous givers, and also to treat our recipients with dignity. What would be some ways of doing that, without being sickeningly patronizing? And is it possible to be the recipient forever, and still remain dignified? I don't think the misery of permanent recipient status is entirely a bad thing. Or is it?
That leads to another topic for you. International aid. That creates such an ugly dependency (such as thousands of stupid forms and plans that mean nothing except shutting up some rich western donor with an obsession with strategic planning). Can those recipient institutions find dignity in their dependency? What if they know they are only dependent because their leaders are kleptocrats, so that their request for aid is simply "rescue me, because the leader who should rescue me has taken his wife shopping in Paris and spent the entire cost of running my school/parish/family/waterutility."
My other squirming reaction surfaces at the topic of old age, where dependency is not on all fours with the dependency of either children or mothers. The kid at Harvard who asked about professional care for aging parents is a good display of the difference, and he was more right than it may have seemed. Babies have no dignity and don't care who changes their clothes, but elderly do have dignity, and do care who helps them change, shower, and go to the toilet. In this realm, they may prefer a (loving, caring but still an) outsider. Is that a worship of autonomy? Or an ancient human reaction that your kids aren't supposed to see you naked? I will be interested to see the book you write when you are eighty. I think your point will be unchanged, but the details will shift a bit.
In that vein, and to wrap up, I offer you a true family story.
Scene: Granddaughter, age 44, helping bathe Grandmother, age 100, because the normal "outside but beloved" helper has COVID. Granddaughter helps Grandmother strip down and get in the shower. In the middle of the shower, the following conversation occurs:
Grandmother: Now why did you come to visit again?
Granddaughter: To see you, Grandmother!
Grandmother: I bet you didn't expect to see this much of me.
Babies, on the other hand, are cheerful about everyone seeing them without clothes. How many small naked children have set off down the block on a warm summer evening to visit the neighbors? I know several and I bet you do too.
So to close: I'm a fan, for sure. But is there another book or two to write someday?