Leah Libresco Sargeant is a writer who has been making the rounds promoting her new book, The Dignity of Dependence. In a recent interview with Church Life Journal, she said that her book is an attempt to debunk what she sees as a false idea of what we are as human beings, namely the idea that we are “autonomous individuals who do not need much from anyone.”
Unfortunately, our society tends to view as normative that brief period in our lives, usually in our late 20s, “when your parents are in good health, you are unmarried, you have not had kids yet, you’re doing well at your job, and no one else can make demands on you.” When this is seen as “normal life,” we tend to view times when dependency is part of daily experience as an aberration or a kind of failure. But, she reminds us, “we are made for dependency. We all depend on God, even in our biggest moments of strength. And we are better off when we tell the truth about what it means to be human.”
Much of Libresco’s book discusses how failure to consider this basic reality about the human condition leads to an underlying cultural hostility to those who can’t care for themselves and are largely dependent on others. Examples of this would be the poor, the sick, the elderly, and those with disabilities. But she also points out that the inherent biological differences between men and women, namely the fact that women can become pregnant, leave women more exposed to dependence than men. “Every woman, whether she hopes to have children or not, knows that her body is oriented towards pregnancy, whether that is something she hopes for, which [she] may or may not succeed at, or whether it is something she fears.” Much of the fear of pregnancy and the rearing of small children is related to the way it is viewed as an obstacle to professional achievement and financial security, things highly valued in a culture that prizes autonomy. Libresco argues that though women may be less “efficient” and “economically productive” during these experiences, their increased vulnerability and dependence provide invaluable opportunities for others, especially men, to provide help. “Men have to make an active choice to extend their bodies over someone in protection and love,” she says, since “their strength will not be naturally called out of them in the way women’s is through pregnancy. We have to ask them.”
Young men especially need to learn what their strength is for, that it is to be put at the service of those who are weaker. They need to learn that “there are people around you who are distinctively vulnerable. They are waiting for you to offer.” But there is also something essential about not being ashamed to request help. “Building up a society that is humane, that responds to need, does not start with offering to help people, which always puts you in the superior position, the magnanimous position. It begins by putting yourself in the abject position of the petitioner, asking people for help.” Acknowledging dependence, rather than hiding it or resenting it, is to acknowledge something true about the universal human condition. Better integrating it into the way we think of ourselves and structure our society would have a much-needed humanizing effect on our culture.
posted 11/22/25
The Parish of St. Cecilia-St. Gabriel 