Biden's infrastructure plan should cover childcare and home care. Here's why | Jamaal Bowman

Our infrastructure' isn't just steel and concrete. It is the millions of people who provide care services and the millions who rely on them

It's the one thing everyone in Washington can agree on: our nation's infrastructure is crumbling and in desperate need of repair. The Biden administration has outlined its sweeping plan to overhaul crumbling roads and bridges across America, while building up the clean energy economy of the future, and that's an important first step in the right direction. Still, as my colleagues begin debating and negotiating over specific details in this proposal, one thing has become really clear to me: the way we think about infrastructure itself needs a rethink.

What we need to understand better as a nation is that our infrastructure does not just look like steel, concrete and transport - it is also the nurturing, patience and diligence of care workers. Care work touches all of our lives from beginning to end, from the unpaid labor of those who raise us as children, childcare workers, teachers, home aides and healthcare workers, to those who care for us in old age and see us through the end of our lives. Care is one of the strongest pillars of our economy, yet those who do this work - disproportionately Black and brown women, often immigrants - are under-supported, undervalued and under-compensated, if compensated at all.