Opinion | Can We Put an End to America’s Most Dangerous Myth?

It’s time to value another facet of life: the power and skill of being dependent. I call it “the art of dependence.”

“The art of dependence” means accepting aid with grace and, crucially, recognizing the importance of others. It takes dignity and skill to lean on friends, loved ones and colleagues — and even on the state. Resourcefulness is required for collaboration. We sometimes work hard to get what we demand: To secure aid from social services often requires what is known as the administrative burden — the effort, knowledge and sheer time it takes for citizens to obtain benefits. In a society that pathologizes dependence — even as every human being is born into it — being vulnerable takes courage.

Recognizing the art of dependence also means properly acknowledging how most Americans actually live: Some 25 percent of adults in the United States have some type of disability; more than 56 million Americans are enrolled in Medicare. In other words, tens of millions of us are dependent in some way on assistance. Needing support, be it physical or mental, or even making your way through complex forms to get unemployment money or student financial aid, is part of engaging with society. Indeed, asking for help and working with others demands patience, humility and organization in some cases, and social skills in others. (It can also take craft. In fact, the scholar William Huntting Howell, in his book “Against Self-Reliance,” used the phrase “arts of dependence” to describe crafts that were supposedly derivative and collective, like early American women’s embroidery.)

It takes craft and skill, for instance, to feed a family of five on minuscule monthly food benefits; or to navigate street crossings in a wheelchair, even if they are designed with street cuts made to regulation, or to access child care or find bosses who tolerate or even encourage taking sick days. And the Americans who say that the substantial contributor to economic inequality is the personal choices people make — the 60 percent of Republicans who say this, according to a 2020 Pew study — may imagine they are independent and masters of their own lives. But they too are not exempt from dependency. If they are privileged, they rely on tax breaks, colleagues and social connections, roads, telecom infrastructure, health insurance and their employees. Part of acknowledging the art of dependence means we release people from shame about their needs for others, and expose the lie of being self-made as it is propagated publicly by some of America’s wealthiest people.

I have interviewed many people who not only accepted the art of dependence but also worked to create frameworks for healthy dependence and interdependence, for themselves and for others. They ranged from a New York City politician who started a mutual aid group in her Brooklyn neighborhood to a peer counselor at a nonprofit that offered assistance to adults with adverse childhood experiences, who thought caring for others in tough straits was far more important than resilience.