Alison Gopnik and Anne-Marie Slaughter on Why We’re Not Paying Enough Attention to Caregiving

Caregiving is the most universal of human acts. But also one of the most invisible. While caring for a child, parent or loved one can be meaningful, and life defining, it can also be exhausting and life breaking. Drawing on her groundbreaking research on baby’s brains, UC Berkeley psychologist and philosopher Alison Gopnik is leading a multidisciplinary project to better understand the social science of caregiving with hopes of translating those insights into practical policies. Gopnik and policymaker Anne-Marie Slaughter join us to talk about how rethinking our approach to caregiving and how we support care providers, could lead to a better, more functional society.

Show Highlights

The Human Instinct to Care Beyond Ourselves

Caregiving is one of the most universal — and most invisible — human acts, says Alison Gopnik, professor of psychology and philosophy at UC Berkeley. While many mammals care for their young, humans are unique in their ability to extend that instinct far beyond immediate family. “Part of our success,” she says, “is that we can take that impulse and apply it to lots of people — even to the nonhuman world, or to the planet.”

For Gopnik, caregiving means more than simply meeting basic needs; it’s about fostering growth and independence. “What I want to do is help you gain more autonomy, more liberty — to be able to make your own decisions,” she says. “And I think that’s a really important part of how human beings work.”

Rebuilding Systems Around Care, Not Just Labor

Despite caregiving’s central role in human life, it is largely overlooked in economic models and policy frameworks. Anne-Marie Slaughter, CEO of New America, points out that our economic and employment policies are built around the idea of individual workers. What if, she asks, we also invested in people’s ability to care for one another?

Both experts suggest pragmatic shifts: implementing paid family leave, offering tax credits for “caring communities,” and reimagining housing to bring generations together. 

The Personal Toll — and Deep Rewards — of Caregiving

Caregiving can be deeply rewarding, but it is also profoundly exhausting. Caller Denise shared her experience caring for her parents, who were both struck by serious health issues at the same time: “It’s been almost five years of growing intensity and demands. I’ve had a mental health crisis through all of it. It really takes a toll on someone’s mind and spirit.”

Yet caregiving also cultivates deep, often overlooked skills. As caller Christine reflected: “I’ve come to the firm conclusion that no one should get to be a CEO unless they’ve been a housewife. The HR skills, the money management, the time management, the goal setting — all of it came into play for me.”

Valuing Care

Caregiving is often undervalued — both socially and economically. Slaughter stresses the need to respect and support caregivers: “A big part of the care conversation has to be: who is doing the caring right now? And how do we value them? They are often among the lowest-paid members of our workforce.”

Toward a “Caregiving Society”

Gopnik and Slaughter call for a profound shift: reorganizing society around the value of care. “We need to make caregiving part of what our government thinks about if we want a healthy society,” Slaughter says. “Because even though caregiving can be rewarding, it is also very hard.”

Gopnik adds that caregiving should not be seen merely as an individual act, but as something we do together — a collective effort that strengthens communities. We need to take that seriously as a societal responsibility, she says.

This content was edited by the Forum production team but was generated with the help of AI.