In this “brilliantly argued and timely book” (Brigid Schulte, New York Times bestselling author), journalist Elissa Strauss explores the powerful role caring for others plays in our individual and communal lives, weaving together research about care and stories from parents and caregivers with a feminist bent. Behind our current caregiving crisis, in which a broken system has left parents and caregivers exhausted, sits a fierce addiction to independence. But what would happen if we started to appreciate dependency, and the deep meaning of one person caring for another? If we start to care about care? Drawing on research into parenting and caregiving, as well as her own experiences as a mother, journalist Elissa Strauss delves into the history and power of care in our lives and communities. With a curiosity and desire to more fully understand one of humanity’s most profound and essential relationships, she interrogates our societal obsession with going it alone, and poses a challenge to let ourselves be transformed by the act of caregiving. When You Care weaves historical anecdotes and science with conversations with parents and caregivers to the young, old, disabled, ill, and more, revealing a rich array of insights about how care shapes us on the inside and the outside, for the better. Care is a long-ignored force in our collective and political lives, as well as a deeply philosophical, spiritual, and psychologically potent experience. Moreso, an embrace of care by both women and men will lead to a more gender equitable future and help us reimagine what it means to be productive and live a meaningful life. The result is an eye-opening exploration into the power of being depended on—and a stirring call to action to finally acknowledge the breadth, depth, and beauty of all that caregivers do.
How did “ordinary women,” like their male counterparts, become capable of brutal violence during the Holocaust? Cultural historian Elissa Mailänder examines the daily work of twenty-eight women employed by the SS to oversee prisoners in the concentration and death camp Majdanek/Lublin in Poland. Many female SS overseers in Majdanek perpetrated violence and terrorized prisoners not only when ordered to do so but also on their own initiative. The social order of the concentration camp, combined with individual propensities, shaped a microcosm in which violence became endemic to workaday life. The author’s analysis of Nazi records, court testimony, memoirs, and film interviews illuminates the guards’ social backgrounds, careers, and motives as well as their day-to-day behavior during free time and on the “job,” as they supervised prisoners on work detail and in the cell blocks, conducted roll calls, and “selected” girls and women for death in the gas chambers. Scrutinizing interactions and conflicts among female guards, relations with male colleagues and superiors, and internal hierarchies, Female SS Guards and Workaday Violence shows how work routines, pressure to “resolve problems,” material gratification, and Nazi propaganda stressing guards’ roles in “creating a new order” heightened female overseers’ identification with Nazi policies and radicalized their behavior.
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