One of the most memorable moments after the twins were born came just before a routine feeding in the hospital, when I asked the nurse if I had time to go to the bathroom.
“Go, go,” she said. “It’s important that you take care of yourself first.”
Anne and I laughed about the experience when it happened, and have brought it up a few times since. Take care of myself first? This wasn’t any kind of personal emergency – I just had to pee.
Neither need was critical – I could have waited to go to the bathroom, and the babies could have waited to eat. But the nurse’s first instinct, to encourage me to prioritize my needs over my infant children, seemed a little absurd. Becoming a parent requires the opposite. Otherwise I would still be sleeping eight hours each night. Believe me.
This nurse was taking “self-care” logic to its extreme.
Self-care, originally popularized among activists and other helping professionals, encourages prioritizing one’s own well-being alongside the needs of others. After all, a social worker who is sick, exhausted or stressed out has little left to give their patients, and so any investment in themselves is also an investment in their work.
Literature promoting self-care has proliferated over the years and encourages readers to feel empowered to put their needs first. Practices range from physical health, like exercising and sleeping well, to emotional, financial, and social activities aimed at reducing stress. As a blog post for the meditation app Calm puts it:
“There’s nothing more essential than taking time to care for your own wellbeing. Despite outdated beliefs, self-care isn’t selfish. It’s a necessary act that allows you to show up for yourself, others, and your life, more effectively.”
In other words: Secure your own oxygen mask first before helping others.
Underpinning this movement is the assumption that most of us lack time for ourselves within our stressful modern lives. As Brené Brown says, “in a society that says, ‘put yourself last,’ self-love and self acceptance are almost revolutionary.”
Indeed, each of us knows someone who devotes all their energy to others and needs to be forced to prioritize themselves. For them – the family member whose herculean effort makes the holidays possible, or the colleague who picks up everyone’s slack – setting aside time for themselves can feel selfish, and the language of self-care gives them permission to do so.
But for the rest of us, who don’t necessarily put ourselves last, it’s worth considering whether the self-care movement focuses too much of our language around me and my: What is best for me? What are my needs? Life is necessarily a balance between focusing on ourselves and focusing on others, and viewing everything through self-care goggles can give us license to ignore everyone but ourselves and our short term needs.
For example, while setting boundaries with family – a common self-care suggestion – might simplify our lives, it can also be hurtful to those who love us most. A weekly massage might feel great, but it can also come at the expense of long-term financial security or our monthly rent. Any decision needs to balance both individual needs and collective responsibilities.
Similarly, many common self-care practices, like doing yoga, making a budget or reading a book, are simply one of many options at our disposal, and speaking about them as some sort of necessary medicine can be infantilizing. We all know which activities fill our cup and which activities drain it, and we can decide for ourselves which to pursue. As I wrote back in 2022, “if you don’t feel the way I do about books, why do you feel you should read more of them?” Yoga is not inherently better than video games.
I find it telling that, in the wake of becoming new parents, Anne and I have been told multiple times to take care of ourselves, but not once to take care of our kids. Maybe that’s implied, but the language we use is a reflection of the things we value. That nurse’s reaction in the hospital shows how pervasively we have internalized the idea of “securing our own oxygen masks first,” despite that scenario describing emergencies, not daily life. In a society that is already heavily focused on the individual, it might pay to be more explicit about our obligations to each other.
And in my experience, some of the best forms of self-care are not self-focused at all, like volunteering or helping out a friend. As Dale Carnegie wrote in How to Stop Worrying and Start Living:
“A third of the people who rush to psychiatrists for help could probably cure themselves if they could only do as Margaret Yates did: get interested in helping others.“
– Emmett
What I’m Reading:
The Anti-Social Century – Derek Thompson
“The anti-social century is the result of one such cascade, of chosen solitude, accelerated by digital-world progress and physical-world regress. But if one cascade brought us into an anti-social century, another can bring about a social century. New norms are possible; they’re being created all the time.”
Tech Outage – Robert Glazer
“At those phoneless meals, I was more aware of families where everyone—old and young—was on their device, and I noted the contrast between our conversation and their disengagement. It became clear to me that allowing technology to take over our meals isn’t just unhealthy—it’s a failure of leadership.”
What I’m Listening To:
America in ’68 Series – The Rest Is History Podcast (1 – Nightmare in Vietname, 2 – Assassination of MLK, 3 – The Killing of RFK, 4 – George Wallace, 5 – The Chicago Riots, 6 – Nixon’s Great Comeback)