How Domestic Labor Became Infrastructure

Since the Biden administration released its infrastructure proposal, a semantic debate has arisen around a specific provision: the $400 billion in spending for at-home care for the elderly and disabled. Many Republicans and some Democrats have bristled that such spending—along with more robust family-leave mandates and investments in child-care access that are expected in a second package—is not “infrastructure.” Infrastructure, they argue, consists only of the physical things that make the American economy run: roads and bridges built by men in hard hats, which nearly all politicians in Washington agree require more investment and are usually prefaced with the adjective crumbling.

The conceptualization of visiting nurses as infrastructure—definitionally, the basic physical and organizational structures needed for the operation of a society—has struck some that featured the $400 billion figure in an ugly black-and-yellow scheme, set against an ominously blurry legislative document. “President Biden’s proposal is about anything but infrastructure.” Even some prominent allies of the president, such as Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, stopped short of defending care work as infrastructure. “There’s this semantic debate that’s opening up,” Buttigieg . “To me it’s a little bit besides the point … If it’s a good policy, vote for it and call it whatever you like.”