I’m not a fan of trend stories, but this one is interesting, even if it doesn’t actually reflect any major change: Women are leaving their careers to care for their elderly parents.
In another era, the task of caring for elderly parents often fell to the unmarried daughter who never left home and never worked for a living. But now, in a 21st-century twist on the 19th-century spinster, career women like Ms. Geist who have made their mark in the world are returning home to care for parents in old age.
They are embracing a filial role that few could have imagined in their futures and are doing so by choice. In fact, sociologists are beginning to give the phenomenon a name: the Daughter Track, a late-in-life version of the Mommy Track, a career downsizing popular with younger women.
Women, now as always, bear a disproportionate burden for elder care and often leave jobs, either temporarily or permanently, when the double duty becomes overwhelming , according to recent studies of family care-giving, women in the workplace and retirement patterns. Although there is no precise count of how many women have walked away from careers to care for their parents, more of them than ever are financially independent, unmarried or childless, which makes it more feasible than it might be for women with families at home. And never have more parents needed adult children to care for them, what with long life expectancy and disabling conditions like Alzheimer’s disease.
This is particularly interesting to me as I watch my grandparents get older — both of my grandmothers have now moved in with their daughters, one because of debilitating illness and one more out of convenience. My aunt in Seattle (where my grandma also lives) has retired to take full-time care of my maternal grandmother; my mom has taken time off work to help care for her; and my aunt in California has made multiple trips up to see her and give my Seattle aunt some time off. Their brother has good intentions, and has sent money and visited once, but hasn’t been a primary caretaker the way that all three of the women in the family have. As far as I can tell, there isn’t any resentment about that, or expectation that he would (and to be fair, he’s the only member of the family that still has kids at home).
Despite a growing number of men helping aging relatives, women account for 71 percent of those devoting 40 or more hours a week to the task, according to the National Alliance for Caregiving and AARP in a 2004 study. Among those with the greatest burden of care, regardless of sex, 88 percent either take leaves of absence, quit or retire.
I should make it clear that this isn’t necessarily a bad thing (it’s one of those things that, I think, is beyond classification as “good” or “bad”). It’s obviously not ideal that one gender is expected to devoting their entire lives to the service of others. But, not to get too cheesy, I think it’s valuable to not lose sight of what really matters in life — and while I hate to see things like caring for family become socially mandated for a group of people by simple virtue of their vagina-possession, the flip side is that it gives women the option of quitting their jobs or taking time off without too many people second-guessing them. I don’t think the same can be said for men. Imagine a 50-year-old man announcing in the boardroom that he’s quitting in order to care full-time for his elderly parents.
I say that partially because I hope that when my parents are older and need me, I’ll be there. I think it’s valuable to put family first — and I don’t mean that in the way that the “traditional values” crowd does, as code for a patriarchal family structure. But family, however you define yours, is the bedrock of your life — or at least for me, mine is. My parents sacrificed everything for my sister and I and worked incredibly hard to give us every advantage they could. Part of life, I think, is returning the favor later when they need it (even though, in my view, it’s not as much about “returning favors” as it is just doing what you do for people you love).
Of course, this article generally ignores the class issues inherent in the “daughter track” phenomenon (it is, after all, in the New York Times). A woman who is making a six-figure salary and has a 401(k) and a good amount in her savings account can probably manage to take a year or two off to care for her parents full-time. A woman who is working for $5.15 an hour and barely getting by herself, or who is still supporting her own kids, doesn’t have that privilege. And yet, a lot of women who barely keep their own heads above water do somehow manage to care for their elderly parents on top of everything else. I’d like to see an article on how they manage it — and what the parents of women who can’t manage it do.
I’d love to see a cultural shift in which men are just as willing (and just as expected) to be caretakers of children and the elderly, and where caretaking and traditional “women’s work” are valued as highly as traditional men’s work. That’ll be real progress.
UPDATE: Amanda, The Countess and Echidne have more. All very worth reading.