The restrained state has always sought to devalue socially reproductive work, often consigning it to the private family unit, where it is viewed as a natural part of female relational roles. This marginalisation of social reproduction adversely affects those performing it and reduces their resilience to vulnerability. The pandemic has largely shattered the liberal illusions of autonomous personhood and state restraint. The reality of our universal embodied vulnerability has now become impossible to ignore, and society’s reliance on socially reproductive work has therefore been pushed into public view. However, the pandemic has also exacerbated harms and pressures for those performing paid and unpaid social reproduction, creating a crisis that demands an urgent state response. As it is argued in this paper, the UK response to date has been inadequate, illustrating an unwillingness to abandon familiar principles of liberal individualism. However, the pandemic has also created a climate of exceptionality, which has prompted even the most neoliberal of states to consider measures that in the past would have been dismissed. In this paper, it is imagined how the state can use this opportunity to become more responsive and improve the resilience of social reproduction workers, both inside and outside the home.

受约束的国家一直试图贬低社会生殖工作的价值，经常将其委托给私人家庭单位，在那里它被视为女性关系角色的自然组成部分。这种社会再生产的边缘化对执行它的人产生不利影响，并降低了他们对脆弱性的抵御能力。这场流行病在很大程度上打破了人们对自主人格和国家克制的自由主义幻想。我们普遍存在的脆弱性的现实现在变得不可忽视，因此社会对社会生殖工作的依赖已被推向公众视野。然而，大流行也加剧了对有偿和无偿社会再生产者的伤害和压力，造成了需要国家紧急应对的危机。正如本文所论证的那样，迄今为止，英国的反应并不充分，这表明英国不愿放弃熟悉的自由个人主义原则。然而，大流行也创造了一种特殊的气氛，这促使即使是最新自由主义的国家也考虑采取过去会被驳回的措施。在本文中，设想了国家如何利用这一机会变得更加敏感并提高家庭内外的社会再生产工人的弹性。