Unlearning Capitalism: Empowering Parenting Strategies

Capitalism has placed us under many spells that influence and limit what we believe to be normal and natural. Parenting is one intimate site where capitalism’s spell is particularly impactful. Often leaving parents and children to feel especially isolated, alone, and precarious—perfect for keeping working people separated and oppressed and for grooming children into docile workers under capitalism. 

To kick off our new series on Post Capitalist Parenting, we’ve invited on Toi Smith, mother of four and a Growth and Impact Strategist. Toi’s work centers on doing life, business, and motherhood differently and collaborating with people who are countercultural, liberatory, and revolutionary. In this conversation, we start to reveal and unlearn what Capitalism has told us about what parenting should look like and what it is for. We deconstruct motherhood under capitalism and explore post capitalist parenting strategies, tools, and resources. And we look at how viewing parenting as a political act can help to empower, connect, and liberate both families and communities.

This episode was produced in collaboration with EcoGather, a collapse-responsive co-learning network that hosts free online Weekly EcoGatherings that foster conversation and build community around heterodox economics, collective action, and belonging in an enlivened world. In this collaboration, EcoGather will be hosting gatherings to bring some Upstream episodes to life—this is one of those episodes. We hope you can join the gathering on March 8, 2025 at 12pm - 1:30pm EST to discuss the topics covered in this episode. Find out more here.

Further Resources

• Toi Smith
• Loving Black Single Mothers
• Deconstructing Motherhood
• The Black Panther Party: A Graphic Novel History By David F. Walker, Illustrated by Marcus Kwame Anderson
• An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States for Young People By Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Adapted by Jean Mendoza and Debbie Reese
• Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World By Anand Giridharadas
• Ejaculate Responsibly: A Whole New Way to Think About Abortion, By Gabrielle Stanley Blair
• Cannibal Capitalism: How our System is Devouring Democracy, Care, and the Planet – and What We Can Do About It by Nancy Fraser
• Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto by Cinzia Arruzza, Tithi Bhattacharya and Nancy Fraser
• Black Scare / Red Scare: Theorizing Capitalist Racism in the United States by Charisse Burden-Stelly 
• A People's Guide to Capitalism: An Introduction to Marxist Economics, By Hadas Thier 
• Social Reproduction Theory: Remapping Class, Recentering Oppression, Edited by Tithi Bhattacharya
• Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines, Edited by Alexis Pauline Gumbs, China Martens, and Mai’a Williams

Related Episodes:

• Black Scare / Red Scare with Charisse Burden-Stelly
• A People's Guide to Capitalism with Hadas Thier
• Feminism for the 99 Percent (Documentary)

Cover art: Carolyn Raider Intermission music: "Left Fist Evolution" by Bianca Mikahn

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