Childcare, Vulnerability, and Resilience


Professor of Law, University of Richmond School of Law. For thoughtful reactions and comments, I thank Suzanne Kim, Kimberly Jenkins Robinson, Laura Spitz, and Allison Anna Tait. My work on this project was enriched while I was a Visiting Scholar at the Vulnerability and the Human Condition Initiative at Emory University, 2017‐18. I also received generative feedback on the project through various stages at the following workshops: the Family Law Scholars and Teachers Conference; the Workshop on Vulnerability and the Social Reproduction of Resilient Societies; the Southeastern Association of Law Schools Annual Meeting, Works‐in‐Progress Series; Panel Discussion: Whither Redistribution? Feminism, Neoliberalism, Work, and Family, Law & Society Conference; and the Workshop on Children, Vulnerability and Resilience, Emory Law School, Atlanta, Georgia. I am grateful to a terrific team of research assistants for help with this paper as well as my larger scholarly agenda on childcare law and policy: Alex Cook, Juliet Edwards, Phillip Grubbs, John O’Malley, Kerrigan O’Malley, Emily Palombo, Joseph Scoggins, Liz Tyler, Ivana Wade, and especially Allison Smith. Thanks, also, to the editors at the Yale Law & Policy Review for their thoughtful editing of the piece. This Article is dedicated to my mother, Barbara Smith Johnson, who was a gifted teacher and a passionate advocate for children.