What Happens When You Try to “Maximize Profit” in a Daycare Center
For certain subjects, there is a profile of the type of writer, journalist, or academic who does work on them. To be very basic: people who report about sports usually play or have played sports. This makes sense: you know a lot about it and you’re invested in it. It can also really help avoid various “gazes” that have historically been applied to other people’s lived experience. I ascribe to the belief that it’s better, as a general rule, to have Native people reporting about Native people, or disabled people reporting about disability.
But if you extend this thinking further, you can find yourself in the curious position where you get a whole lot of people writing with skill and precision about an issue, but that writing gets ignored — or is considered less important — because, to put it simply, they are not cis-gendered able-bodied white dudes. The things that those men write about are “important” and “affect us all,” so if they’re not writing about it, it must not be important (or affect us all). Bullshit, obviously, but this logic endures. But I also don’t think we should cede reporting on all subjects to white dudes, just to underline its importance.
What I like is when a white guy does really important work on a subject that very directly affects him — and underlines all the ways it is universal, and we should all care about it, but without asking for any laurels for being the Good Guy who writes about it. That’s Elliot Haspel, who’s been doing consistently incredible reporting on the state of childcare for years. He does this reporting because having access to high-quality, affordable childcare makes society better for everyone, regardless of gender or age or whether or not they themselves have kids.
I feel the same — which is why I write about care so much, even though I personally don’t have kids. And it’s why, whenever I see Elliot has a new piece, I rush to read it. After reading one of his latest, on what private equity is doing to the industry at large, I asked him if he’d be willing to talk a bit more about his reporting, where he thinks we’re headed, and if it’s ever going to get better. So read on, because I have a very strong feeling you’ll appreciate this work as much as I do.