Caring for Mom and Dad: An Argument for Shared Responsibilities

An article in the Wall Street Journal today highlights the increasing numbers of adult children that are caring for elderly parents with various medical conditions and ailments. Presently 10 million adults (50 and over) are caring for at least one living parent. 

In line with past trends, women continue to provide the majority of care for elderly parents (in 1994, 9% of women provided care for an aging parent, and in 2008, 28% of women were providing care for an aging parent)

Interestingly, though, while only 3% of men provided care for an aging parent in 1994, 17% of men in 2008 provided care for an aging parent. 

Thus, while women continue to do a disproportionate share of the caregiving work, there has been some progress in getting more men to share in caregiving responsibilities. The goal being that insofar as parents are the parents of both sons and daughters, men and women, there might someday be a nearly equal distribution of caregiving work between the sexes. 

But perhaps a skeptic might resist striving for a more equal distribution of caregiving work between the sexes. 

In response, besides the obvious point that any responsibilities that a daughter might have to care for an aging parent are equally shared by a son, there is a further point that caregiving work, while providing certain rewards, also exacts considerable costs. Economically, wages are often forgone so as to provide the necessary care for a parent. But further, caregiving for a parent that can at times be deeply forgetful, obstinate, and/or confused places considerable stresses on the caregiver who in turn can face increased risk of hypertension, diabetes, pulmonary disorders, and/or disposition to smoke or drink alcohol. To the extent that women do more of the caregiving work in our society, they also carry a greater share of the costs and stresses associated with caregiving. Such a burden should be more equitably shared between the sexes. 

Thoughtful, meaningful, and personal care of aging parents is vital work that should be encouraged in our society. As more baby boomers age, this task will only become more pressing. But in the process, we need to be conscious of the historical tendency to allot caregiving work, along with its associated costs and stresses, primarily to women. At the very least, conversations need to take place about the dynamics of caregiving within families and amongst siblings. More substantially, men and women, sons and daughters should strive to provide support and care to aging parents so as to share the costs and stresses of such work. 

In the process, perhaps, both men and women, sons and daughters will also share in the rewards of caregiving work, the potential for deeper relationships with parents and siblings, along with the development of an ethics of care that emphasizes the finitude and dependency that we all face as fragile human beings and the corresponding need for visible and present communities of support and care.