The Angry Caregiver

  Early this morning, out of curiosity, I made a list of things that need doing. These are near horizon things only, they just need doing as soon as I can get to them. There were 48 items on the list when I had to stop because I had to get busy helping Mom with her morning routine. Last summer I was informed that SPOR Evidence Alliance had selected my research topic for a $50,000 research grant to conduct an initial literature review. My research topic was to look into the quantitative data of family caregiving - what do we know of the time and materials costs of family caregiving documented through receipts, time and motion studies, time on task records? My writing this evening is interrupted with the slow shuffle of Mom's slippers in the hall. "Jenny, can you come and help me? I can't get the blankets on the bed." Mom was upset. She had gotten into her pyjamas, her dentures were soaking and she had taken care of her toileting needs. What had defeated her was not bei...

  If we are going to change the face of family caregiving we need to re-conceptualize our understanding of who is on the family caregiving team. The burden of family caregiving has been defaulting to daughters and now, even granddaughters of our frail elders. We need to build our family caregiving teams to include our sons and grandsons.  There is no reason for the predominance of caregiving falling onto women's overworked shoulders other than historical and cultural bias. We can only change these conceptions by working at a historical and cultural level to re-set these defaults. We need to re-calibrate our values, assumptions and workload distribution. As a society, we need to value caregiving as a noble pursuit, that ascribes cultural capital to those who put in the time. We need to dignify the work of caregiving in the family home and make it unthinkable that anyone would leave a single family caregiver in charge of providing care for 300, 400 or 500 hours a month. We need ...