Towards a theory of reproductive debt

Abstract

This article builds on existing feminist critiques of transnational debt regimes and austerity politics in order to theorise a new conception of reproductive debt. This involves critiquing debt burdens imposed upon people who reproduce, as a consequence of global restructuring programmes, cuts to social services and the increasing financialisation of reproduction. In place of individualised obligations to financial lenders, I argue that we all owe an infinite debt to those who reproduce, in order to ensure that reproduction is possible when desired and that its necessary conditions – social, cultural and environmental – are supported. This theory of reproductive debt draws on the 1970s Wages for Housework movement, feminist literature on reproductive labour and Kathi Weeks’ post-work politics. It also explores Patty Chang's video exhibition Milk Debt, which was inspired by David Graeber's discussion of the Chinese Buddhist tenet of ‘milk debt’: the infinite kindness of mothers, exemplified by the practice of breastfeeding, which can never be repaid. Recognising the negative impacts of environmental damage and histories of slavery and colonialism on reproduction, reproductive debt is understood as an infinite, non-quantifiable obligation that is the basis for our shared existence on this planet.