Acknowledging dependence
Let’s say I’m traveling out of town this weekend. This might, in some sense, reflect my independence, but my solo trip is layered with various forms of reliance on others. I depend on my friend to pick me up with plenty of time to catch my flight, and upon my arrival, I depend on a rideshare driver to take me to my final destination. I’m depending on my partner for all kinds of things throughout my trip, from watering our plants in my absence to planning a nice meal for my return home. Finally, after years of reminders that I did not appreciate at the time, I no longer depend on my mom to remind me to pack an extra layer—I know I will be cold without it.
These are examples of interpersonal dependence, the kind of dependency relation that holds between identifiable persons (my depending on you). While there is obvious value in self-reliance, the numerous and varied interpersonal dependency relations shaping our lives are often compatible with—even conducive to—cultivating self-reliance. (Thanks for the reminders, mom!) Some, like parent-child or romantic relations, can be the most defining and significant of our lives.
As feminist philosophers, especially those in the care ethical tradition, are keen to point out, much of the history of mainstream ethical thought has neglected the extent and significance of our dependence on others. This is in part because we buy into what is sometimes called the “myth of independence” (or “autonomy myth”). Not only do we ignore the kind and amount of help we get from others and uphold complete self-sufficiency as an ideal, but we do so in a way that draws from and reinforces various oppressive ideologies. We are more likely to describe those who are elderly, disabled, non-male, nonwhite, and non-citizen as depending on others, even holding the kind or amount of help fixed. And, predictably, our ascriptions of dependency function intersectionally (think about the category of “welfare dependency” weaponized against poor Black mothers in particular). Ascriptions of dependence are also “stickier” for people of certain identities. Those with various forms of privilege seem to flit through less permanent or identity-defining forms of dependency (like those mentioned in my first paragraph), while “real” dependence is reserved for those we consider needy, helpless, and even blameworthy.
This is improving as more philosophical work engages directly with human (inter)dependence. But sorting out what actually makes it the case that someone is depending on another person is slippery. If you are like most people, you are probably tempted to reach for the concept of needs. After all, the people we think of as “dependents” tend to be people with pressing or special sorts of needs, especially needs that they can’t meet themselves. Plus, one of the central ways we have tended to overlook dependence is by ignoring the significance of relationships of “inevitable” or “utter” dependency. These are relations between dependency workers and people who are vulnerable to (often immediate) harm or death absent the attention of those workers. We all experience utter dependency as infants, and many of us experience it in old age or through periods of illness or disability. Thankfully, a number of philosophers are incorporating this essential aspect of the human condition directly into moral and political theorizing.
However, acknowledging and properly valuing relations of utter dependency is only the first step in acknowledging the extent of our interpersonal dependence. Bad ideology leads us to discount utter dependence, including by devaluing the work involved in these relations. It also distorts our understanding of more mundane, less pressing cases. Philosophers of disability have been especially keen to notice and critique this. We tend to describe people as having the feature of dependence (and certainly as “dependents”) in predictable ways along lines of race, class, gender, (especially) age, and (especially) disability status. On the other hand, we discount the extent to which we consider “paradigm” citizens dependent, regardless of the effort expended to assist them or the number of people they rely on.
Tom Shakespeare elegantly draws out the insight that higher-status people often do more depending in his book Help: Imagining Welfare. He asks us to think of a family who has food prepared for them, utilizes specialized schools and housing, and has others drive them around, and notice that “you could be describing the British Royal Family” (10). Bad ideology leads us to consider disabled people with these features “dependent” while the royals retain their status as “independent.” This is the difference between what Jackie Scully calls “permitted” and “nonpermitted” dependency. An important goal of theorizing about dependence and resisting the myth of independence is therefore highlighting the various ways that white, male, upper-class, nondisabled people depend on others, and criticizing our tendency to overlook this.
Frameworks designed to treat utter dependence as a paradigm case are not well-positioned to do this. These previous accounts of dependence are what I call “need-centered”: they define dependence as a matter of having needs or as a need-meeting relationship. There is obviously an essential place for needs in how we theorize about depending (and potentially-depending) people. For one thing, it’s far more pressing that we offer assistance to those who have needs they cannot meet themselves than to those who are capable of meeting those needs through other means. For another, much need-meeting work tends to be disturbingly devalued and under-compensated in ways that demand our attention.
But when our aim is to uncover the numerous ways in which we all depend on others, it’s less obvious that this dependence has much to do with needs at all. We seem to be able to depend on others even in the absence of needs. I might depend on a friend for my whimsical desires, for things I’m mistaken about needing, or even for desires that undermine my needs (as when I depend on a friend to hide food from me to enable me to undertake a misguided hunger strike as a political protest, which involves denying my need for sustenance). Our framework for understanding dependence in this mundane sense therefore ought to exclude the concept of needs if it is to be useful in unveiling the extent to which we all depend on one another—all the time and in a variety of ways—regardless of our identities or social positions.
Rethinking dependence
If depending people don’t necessarily need something from those on whom they depend, what makes it the case that they are depending at all? I think we depend on others when we normatively expect work from them, and when they countenance those expectations. Moral philosophers are increasingly acknowledging the significance of normative expectations, making space for the great number of little “oughts” that populate our civil interactions with others—as when we ought to hold the door for the next person entering a store or give our employees a Christmas bonus—even when these do not rise to the level of full-blown obligation. So while we can depend on others for things they are fully obligated to do (fulfilling their promise for an airport ride, providing life-saving care), we can also enter these directed moral relationships for the lesser “oughts” (offering a ride when they are driving toward the airport anyway). Importantly, we can also illegitimately normatively expect things of others, as when we depend on a friend to perform an immoral favor. In cases like this, the content of our expectations means that our dependence loses its moral force.
My suggestion is that we depend on others when we expect them to perform some kind of work (in the sense of “I expect you to finish your chores!” rather than “I expect it will rain tomorrow”), and when they treat those expectations as applying to them. This acknowledgment of expectations need not be explicit; maybe they feel guilty or feel the need to explain themselves if they fail to fulfill expectations. Such acknowledgment is even compatible with rebelling against those expectations (one cannot rebel against a norm which does not apply to one, after all). This means we can’t depend on a passing stranger on the street for a favor by simply forming an expectation of them; they need to countenance the expectations by having at least some awareness and weak endorsement of them. This way of understanding dependence, which I call dependence as an expectation-meeting relation, captures various transient and mundane relations, as well as the more robust, serious, and lasting relations of dependence that meet our important needs.
Dependence in the family
Thinking of dependence as a matter of meeting needs or expectations sounds rather abstract, and it may not be obvious that it changes anything about how we relate to each other. The family is one domain in which understanding dependence as an expectation-meeting relation can make a real difference.
Feminist philosophers have long criticized how exploitation of feminized labor is built into the expectations of heterosexual partnership, especially marriage. As the vast, depressing literatures on the gendered division of domestic, emotional, hermeneutic, and cognitive labor tell us, women perform more labor to maintain the home, care for family members, and preserve relational harmony than do their male partners. In addition to doing more, they experience more stress from and feel less appreciated for the work they do. While there have been historical moments of optimism—radical change was promised in the 1960s, and again during the COVID-19 pandemic—these trends have stubbornly persisted.
Men who benefit from a partner’s tireless efforts to maintain a comfortable home, familial, and social environment are precisely the sorts of “paradigm” citizens whose dependence on others is likely to be overlooked because of bad ideology. In Marxist feminist literature on the exploitation of gendered labor, there is a tendency to exclusively describe women as depending on men and not the other way around, treating economic dependence as the only relevant dependency. While it’s true that people who don’t work outside the home often economically depend on their spouses—and often expect their partners to support their families in this way—it’s also true that people who work outside the home tend to depend on their partners enormously.
By overlooking this as a dependency relation, we risk overlooking one of the key mechanisms through which women’s labor is exploited. Women do not end up performing this labor for no reason. They perform it because men expect it of them, and because they (for various good and bad reasons) view these expectations as applying to them. In short, these men depend on them. To explain what’s troubling about relationships that follow the gendered patterns highlighted above, we might highlight the fact that one’s partner does not need this kind of attention, but nonetheless expects it—conveniently, consistently, and without complaint.
The fact that feminized labor is so frequently described and experienced as “invisible” is deeply connected to the myth of independence. Once this labor is viewed as work, it exposes the naiveté of the myth that men benefiting from it are independent or self-sufficient. A need-centered understanding of dependency is not the best way to capture this, since much of the labor expected of women (keeping home environments tidy and comfortable, preparing meals at convenient times, remembering birthdays, and scheduling playdates) is not needed. Some of these tasks go above and beyond what is necessary, and others could be completed by men rather than primarily or exclusively by women. This underscores the perversity of our expectations that such labor is available without complaint or demand for adequate compensation. It does not mean these men are not depending on their partners.
Understanding dependence as an expectation-meeting relation, on the other hand, helps us pinpoint exactly what is going wrong when labor divisions are unfair. In some cases, men expect labor out of women but then deny the existence of their own expectations. In others, they deny or fail to understand the nature of the work they are expecting their partners to perform. Sometimes, they simply fail to accord this work the right sort of uptake (compensation, reciprocity, gratitude). These are all defective dimensions of the dependency relation itself. Before we can fully understand the ethical nuances of our family and romantic relationships, we need to acknowledge dependence wherever it exists. Only once we are prepared to grapple with the extent of our (inter)dependence can we shape these relationships to reflect our commitments to justice, care, and respect.
The Women in Philosophy series publishes posts on those excluded in the history of philosophy on the basis of gender injustice, issues of gender injustice in the field of philosophy, and issues of gender injustice in the wider world that philosophy can be useful in addressing. If you are interested in writing for the series, please contact the Series Editor Alida Liberman or the Associate Editor Elisabeth Paquette.
Anna-Bella Sicilia
Anna-Bella Sicilia is a PhD candidate at the University of Arizona working primarily on issues in feminist ethics. You can read more about her work at annabellasicilia.com.
