I remember the time of the first lockdown when in the San Mamés stadium, with capital letters and hearts, it spread out: “The force of the mind. Thank you for taking care of us.” In a temple for the production of hegemonic masculinity and capital, they thank them for taking care of them and for kicking a ball they pay millions. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis, the rulers extol the sacrifice of all and all. Meanwhile, the care tasks are performed by women, especially working women, and especially migrants in precarious situations. In other words, women work for free and, in addition, paid jobs are also placed in the worst working conditions. Therefore, what disguises itself as recognition is symbolic violence in this context. As Silvia Federici said, what they call love is unpaid work for women.

Therefore, valuing women who work as slaves is a strategy to perpetuate exploitation and the power relationship. In this sense, the “heroism” of healthcare professionals also shows us in reports full of emotion (which often give us neighborhood shame). Faced with this, many health professionals have raised their voices and asked for resources rather than thanks, applause and idealizations. The romanticism of exploitation and power relations is found in many fields, but plays a special role in the tasks performed by women. In fact, the romanticism of care is an effective heteropatriarchal strategy. Along with the construction of heterosexual romantic love, it is placed in the spontaneity of women the enjoyment, care of others and the prioritization of the needs of others, and it marks a path for women to achieve love and happiness. In the words of Monique Wittig, heterosexuality is not a sexual practice, nor a sexual longing. Moreover, heterosexuality is not just an organization, but a political regime that structures the whole of society. Thus, heterosexual thought presents sexual difference as essential, naturalizes antagonism between men and women and allows men to appropriate women and reared.

The idealization of care tasks, the swelling of care due to love and romanticism, is a phenomenon that we can situate historically and geographically. The friendly families and mothers we know today began to be built in Europe in the 18th century, coinciding with the development of biopower. In the 1950s, in Western societies, the “house angel” was imposed on white middle-class women. In other words, women had to be the loving slaves of the male soldiers who returned from the Second World War. Coinciding with the expansion of neoliberalism, beginning in the 1980s, intensive motherhood began to spread, among other things, around the breastfeeding mandate. Likewise, in our context, the romanticism of care is being carried out in the sphere of maternity, which, naturalized, extends to a large extent to all family care. Are we going to find the same romanticism in the concern to meet the needs of children and the elderly? No doubt: no. Thus, in contemporary Western societies, intensive and romantic motherhood has become hegemonic. Throughout history, this model has rarely been translated, but always in anti-feminist times.

In heteropatriarchal societies, the works of women are continuously naturalized and essentialized, especially those related to the production of life. Feminists, for their part, insist that the jobs women do are also productive, and in this perspective the patriarchal ideas of work, productivity and nature appear. From the time when we have the opportunity to analyze the history of the human being, we find the rationalization, technique, socialization and planning of the production of life, creating knowledge that influenced the form and the moment it occurs. Therefore, the romanticism of care tasks is a mechanism for the essentialization of women's tasks. In fact, in the imaginary of the good custody of others, affections and love prevail. That is, those developed in the family. In this sense, given that women are constructed as loving beings, the care provided by women in the family is considered more appropriate. Therefore, it is essential to denounce the essentialization produced in the works of women and analyze it as a political construction. Understand the relationships that build these works as production relationships.

It is also of vital importance to relate the idealization of care and romantic motherhood with the changes that have taken place in the countries of the global North in recent decades. And that is, although the subjects oppressed by the heteropatriarchate have for decades managed to increase freedom and power, we are now in a reactionary era. In addition, this phenomenon is occurring in Western societies with low fertility rates and, as a result, the celebration of motherhood has direct consequences. In addition, it is fully functional for the interests of capital that women should be free caregivers, as women thus produce the workforce in a very cost-effective way; moreover, today it is their formula, among other things, to expel a large number of employees from the market. All of them are materialising along with the lowering of wages, the precariousness of the feminized sectors and the privatization of public structures, that is, with the increase in the workload of women in families.

Lately, many feminists are becoming apparent that romanticism in care and motherhood is increasing. In addition, the core of these meanings is interiorized into the bowels, that is, that the best way to manage our needs and interdependence is based on the affective bond. On the contrary, in order to be unfamiliar with free work, it is essential to strengthen public structures and, on the other hand, to change that thought, which says that the best care is the one that the women of the family do. A few months ago, for the anger of feminists, the Councillor for Equality of the Basque Government stated that the public care system is not economically sustainable, and that the right of families to care must necessarily be guaranteed. We are very clear: they are anti-feminist policies that strengthen the privileges of men, strengthen the heterosexual regime and are accompanied by capitalist and racist offensives. Thanks will also be given to women, and men and entrepreneurs will continue to raise capital in the capital. Care and family will be exalted, and migrant women will continue to be forced to work under the worst possible conditions. They will fill their mother's love with praise and continue to seek mothers and maids. They say love, but it's exploitation.