{"id":375940,"date":"2018-09-03T14:23:40","date_gmt":"2018-09-03T13:23:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/why-doesnt-the-world-recognize-this-as-work\/"},"modified":"2018-09-03T14:23:40","modified_gmt":"2018-09-03T13:23:40","slug":"why-doesnt-the-world-recognize-this-as-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/why-doesnt-the-world-recognize-this-as-work\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Doesn&#8217;t the World Recognize This as Work?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>As I type this, I\u2019m in the very early stages of labor. Every 15 minutes or so, I\u2019m noticing a small contraction. I\u2019ve never done this before, and I\u2019m nervous, hopeful, antsy.<\/p>\n<p>I read a book that said I should have a \u201clabor project\u201d for these early stages \u2014 these long hours in which there\u2019s not much to do but wait. The book suggested cleaning, baking a \u201cbirthday cake,\u201d organizing baby clothes, or putting photos in an album. I\u2019m awkward at those things and they don\u2019t relax me, so I\u2019ve decided to write instead.<\/p>\n<p>Two paragraphs in, I do feel a little calmer. I\u2019m reminded that labor isn\u2019t entirely new to me, after all. Writing is labor, right? In fact, I\u2019ve heard the book-baby comparison more times than I can count over the course of the last few months, as I\u2019ve been co-writing a book at the same time as I\u2019m incubating a fetus.<\/p>\n<p>However, it\u2019s worth thinking about how even writing, as devalued as it is in our society, is recognized as \u201clabor\u201d much more widely and readily than <em>labor<\/em> labor \u2014 labor that leads to birth \u2014 is. You generally don\u2019t get paid to have contractions. Public recognition of labor as hard work (as opposed to pain inflicted and endured) is rare. There aren\u2019t unions for laboring people.<\/p>\n<p>I doubt there will be laboring-people unions until patriarchy is uprooted, at which point the movement for economic justice may be structured in forms more radical than unions as we know them, anyway. For now, I think it would be a big step to remember that labor is labor. As it\u2019s intensifying for me right now, I\u2019m realizing physically something I\u2019d previously known only intellectually: This could be some of the most difficult work of my life.<\/p>\n<p>At this point, I\u2019m hearing a chorus of voices responding, \u201cThis is nothing! Just you wait until you have your kid!\u201d These voices are not unfamiliar. Throughout my pregnancy, whenever I\u2019ve spoken publicly about the weirdness, wildness, pain and\/or wonder of being pregnant, a cis man&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/truthout.org\/articles\/im-in-labor-and-wondering-why-doesnt-the-world-recognize-this-as-work\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As I type this, I\u2019m in the very early stages of labor. Every 15 minutes or so, I\u2019m noticing a small contraction. I\u2019ve never done this before, and I\u2019m nervous, hopeful, antsy. I read a book that said I should have a \u201clabor project\u201d for these early stages \u2014 these long hours in which there\u2019s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-375940","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=375940"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375940\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=375940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=375940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=375940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}