Raina Cohen

So I think that that's one way loved ones can be supportive.

I mean, I think the kind of underlying principle of not coming from a rigid place of this, there's one or two kinds of relationships that matter, you know, romantic and familial and everything else is less important.

I think that that translates to workplaces and to policy.

So, you know, one way this tends to come up is when somebody, when a friend is ill or has passed away.

And the question is,

What will the workplace do to support them or not?

And also, what does policy allow?

So there was a woman who I mentioned earlier who took care of her best friend who was dying of cancer, was the main caregiver.

And her workplace did not entitle her to family medical leave.

nor when her friend died was she entitled to bereavement leave because those were benefits that were restricted to if it was a family member or a friend.

Interestingly, if this had happened now, the state she lives in, Minnesota, has expanded the definition of

kind of who counts as somebody that you can take this kind of lead for.

So it's anybody that you, you know, you're close enough to consider family, which can be a platonic relationship.

So that's something that both I think workplaces and policy can can do to be more expansive about how about providing

benefits and rights to people who are outside of these boxes of kind of blood or adopted family or marriage and then the one other kind of significant policy area that I explore has to do with the fact that we really only have marriage as a

a source of rights and benefits in this country.

Whereas in other countries and also in other times in the US, there have been things like domestic partnerships that would allow people who are not romantically involved to be able to sign rights to another person.

And instead, what ends up happening is that if you want to have your friend be your, you know,

the air to the goods you have in your life, or you want them to have medical or legal power of attorney rights.

Those are things that you have to do by going to a lawyer, which can be expensive, and going through a lot of paperwork