In the essay, she discovers why breastmilk is really the best milk for babies and while it is the best, that option is not necessarily available for everyone.

At the time, it was the publication’s most read piece in its entire history. This is exactly what happened when Angela Garbes wrote the essay, “The More I Learn About Breast Milk, the More Amazed I Am” for Seattle newspaper The Stranger in 2015. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: These days, one of the measures of success is if something has gone viral, like a photo, video or link that spreads quickly and becomes popular through social media. LIKE A MOTHER: A FEMINIST JOURNEY THROUGH THE SCIENCE AND CULTURE OF PREGNANCY I believe Angela is right, that we need to be having these collective conversations first, in order to push culture to reprioritize against a new axiom of what really matters in our lives.ĮSSENTIAL LABOR: MOTHERING AS SOCIAL CHANGE As I explain to Angela, our family would cease to work without Vicky, who is effectively our third parent. In our conversation, we touch on what this means for all of our lives, including the ways that women like me must come out of our shame pockets to talk about all the people who care for us-labor that has become largely invisible behind the veneer of our projections of what it looks like to be a functioning family in America. A first-generation Philipino-American, Angela makes the argument that the United States must re-orient the way we think about everything-the economy, in particular-to venerate the vital act of care, of tending to each other’s needs, and of prioritizing the collective…otherwise we are lost.

So says author and journalist Angela Garbes, who in the first pages of her new book, ESSENTIAL LABOR, expands the concept of “mothering,” creating a tent for everyone, of any gender, who is engaged in the process of creation and care. And it is it's too much for one person to do.' You're supposed to be able to like handle everything and it's just it's work. You're supposed to be able to like pull yourself up by your bootstraps. And somehow in our culture, it feels like you're asking for too much, if you need things, right, you're supposed to be super self-sufficient. You know, like we need air, we need housing, we need food, we need companionship. That to be a human, the basic condition of being a human is being needful. 'This to me is basic, but it feels like we've drifted really far from it in our culture.

Angela garbes essential labor