“For the smallest and most vulnerable people in our midst, a culture that despises dependence will endanger their lives,” writes Leah Libresco Sargeant in her forthcoming book, The Dignity of Dependence: A Feminist Manifesto (University of Notre Dame Press, October 2025). Hardly an overstatement, when we consider something like the June 9, 2025, legalization of assisted suicide in New York State. It feels, on my darker days, like the world is only for healthy adults in life’s prime. Yawning caverns of big box stores—the kind we all need to routinely visit—are not for babies and small children, pregnant women, sick adults, those living with disabilities of one kind or another, the elderly, or heck, anyone who is simply tired on a given day. And that’s just shopping. 

This is a book about dependence, yes, but also work, efficiency, the intersection of work and care with the legal world, caring (paid and unpaid), feminism, and family. Always family. It could just as easily have been called The Injustice of Efficiency: A Family Manifesto. Placing a focal point on dependence allows for the question of why we place autonomy and self-sufficiency on such a high pedestal. In consistently giving these gods the upper hand, it causes us to dehumanize ourselves and each other. 

This plays out in thorny, third rail social issues, like abortion and euthanasia, but also in mundane economic issues, too. Sargeant cites the example of a worker at a financial company who feels compelled to submit a doctor’s note in order to gain special permission not to work around the clock, including through the night. Basic human needs for sleep would not be enough: “So she spoke to a nurse and got a note stating that ‘due to her mood and anxiety disorders’ she needed eight to nine hours of sleep a night to keep her conditions in check.” 

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Inside each of the weighty chapters, there are small bright gems. Take, for example, the author’s assertion that as a mother of young children, all the author’s time is “already on retainer for others, even if it isn’t always called in.” This thought underscores my days even when I don’t need to cancel a meeting or appointment. The priority of my time lies with those who rely on me. Should it? What emergency warrants leaving?

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These gems—to be savoured, questioned, read slowly, if such a thing is possible—are littered throughout. This is not to say, however, that this particular reader doesn’t also find some flaws. The book opens with a discussion of the world being the wrong shape specifically for women. From tools for surgery to countertop heights, the world is fitted for men. This may be true, as far as it goes, though I’ve not experienced it. But what it leads to, for many women, is adversarial thinking on how men have punished women. I found my mind wandering to a physician friend who is male, but also left-handed—how do doctors’ implements fit his hands? Are men the perpetrators of these problems? How might we better navigate this world that so many of us find increasingly hostile with men as our allies, not our adversaries? 

The other problem is that it is women ourselves who often appear to despise dependence the most. Shoehorning our own bodies into forms that do not fit. Advocating for abortion. Demanding that work be relentlessly difficult for a family schedule. We might ask: did we come as a society to despise dependence when women turned our backs on it?

However, by nature being infinitely open to the main thesis presented in the book, I confess I am not the target audience. Discussions of the world being man-shaped, or at least friendlier to men, open the door for different kinds of woman to enter, even those who find pro-life values to be anathema.  

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I do believe our culture will adapt more humane and dignified practices when women decide to embrace vulnerability and dependence as our own superpower. Women have hugely valuable assets in this sense that go largely untapped, as we scurry about like unhappy rodents, seeking the biggest piece of cheese. 

So, yes, to the dignity of dependence. Can we grab hold of it? Can we honour it? When we do so, especially as women, we may find the trajectory of an autonomous, expedient, falsely independent and efficient-in-all-the-wrong-ways world actually changes. To this end, may the readership for Sargeant’s book be large and appreciative.