What else does reproduction in the Capitalocene look like?
It’s going back to work two weeks after you’ve given birth, worrying that your Caesarean scar is going to split open and your organs fall out (a quarter of American mothers are back to work with an a fortnight of giving birth).
It’s living on credit so you can afford to take time out of work to look after children. It’s two weeks of paternity leave, if that. It’s lying about why you have to leave work early to conceal the fact that you have children at home who need you. It’s rising living costs, including high rent and mortgage payments, that require two parents to work full-time. It’s financially penalizing care workers who take time out of full-time work through unfair, pension and taxation systems. It’s air pollution. It’s inequality of access to restorative natural areas, with children rarely playing in wild places.
It’s thousands of mothers wanting to incorporate work into their lives, but not being able to. It’s not having children because governments are failing to take the climate crisis seriously, or because wages have fallen, or because you won’t get any paid leave. It’s 4.3 million children in the UK living in poverty. It’s almost half of children in lone-parent families living in poverty. It’s almost half of children in black or minority, ethnic families, living in poverty. 
Lucy Jones. (2023) Care work and creativity in late-stage capitalism. Matrescence (page 251). Penguin Random House UK.
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