Caregiving Crisis: Ceci n'est pas un theme
White House executive orders: substantive or symbolic? More women make more money, but they still do more household work than men. 🤷♀️🧹💻😔
Hey everyone,
Hi! I’m back!👋 I’m tired! 🥱 It’s raining! ☔ The Goodmen went to the movies to see the 40th anniversary of “Return of the Jedi”1… so I figured I should do a Return of the Caregiving Crisis.2
Here’s me catching up on the headlines.
I actually started writing an issue a month-ish ago. But then the shooting in Nashville happened and it didn’t feel right to be sending out this news and whimsical gifs. And there’s been a dizzying amount of abortion news across the country, and of course, the dizzying Mifepristone/abortion drug court decisions. (Pro tip: Subscribe to Jessica Valenti’s Abortion Every Day newsletter). And I’ve learned about digital blackface and want to be sure I’m not perpetuating that in this newsletter.
And… I didn’t have an essay theme in mind to wrap it all up in a neat little bow. Could I somehow make our Grand Canyon trip over spring break into an essay about the humbling experience of standing on the precipice of billions of years of history and an unfathomable scale of nature (while also worrying that my climbing-hungry kid would flip over the rails that are not exactly tall!!!) and extrapolate it the lapping of three years of the pandemic or the latest studies on the wage gap or sharing of household duties? Naw.
And that’s OK! I can give myself grace. The pace of news and ideas and policies and voices in the conversation is moving fast these days. And while I’d like to have a cogent take to say what I think it ALL means, I don’t know if that’s possible right now. 🔮
To me, the theme is: there is no theme because there is SO MUCH going on. And there is SO MUCH going on because there is SO MUCH at stake.
As the 2024 election starts to take shape, we’ll start seeing some themes emerge. Women will be a deciding factor, the news is already saying, not only for their views on caregiving but also the economy. Will these two topics converge (as they rightly should)? Will caregiving policy/infrastructure be positioned as healthcare, for the enormous toll it takes?
So, ceci n’est pas un theme. Not yet. TBD.
Thanks for being here. Please message with your thoughts for future issues. Our next monthly-ish issue is… June? See you soon.
What To Know About the Caregiving Crisis This Week
NEWS WATCH: ROUNDUP — Keeping tabs on legislation, regulation and conversation:
BIDEN’S EXECUTIVE ORDERS ON CARE — The Biden Administration has issued an executive order to federal agencies to work to "lower the cost of child care and improve long-term care for older adults and people with disabilities," per The 19th. The White House says the order, which features some 50 directives, is "the most comprehensive set of executive actions" by any President related to supporting care. The directives go to nearly every cabinet-level agency and are being taken as a way to push for action that doesn't require approval by Congress.
Is it symbolic? The AP notes the directives would be funded out of existing commitments, meaning the impact likely "would be limited and possess more of a symbolic weight about what's possible." For instance, they’d likely involve the child care commitments now mandated for chip makers. In 2021, the AP notes, Biden was more ambitious in calling for more than $425 billion to expand child care, make it more affordable and increase pay to caregivers.
“The executive order doesn’t require any new spending,” Biden said in remarks at the White House. “It’s about making sure taxpayers get the best value for the investments they’ve already made.”
OK SO WHAT ARE THE EXECUTIVE ORDERS — Omg so many. As The 19th reports, “the goal is to look under every rock and use every tool at the administration’s disposal, White House officials said on a call with reporters.” Here’s the White House Fact Sheet. We like how The 19th breaks it down so, a smattering:
Expand the requirements built into the Chip Act (manufacturers wanting subsidies to provide employees with child care.)
For federal grant programs, baking in child care and long-term care support to workers employed on federal projects. (Or incentivizing employers seeking those grants to provide this.)
Expand access to federal child care centers and subsidies for federal employees.
To lower costs, the Department of Health and Human Services to look at how to lower/eliminate costs for families receiving grants that already subsidize care. (The 19th notes this could just mean boosting grant programs)
To raise pay, HHS will be "directed to increase pay and benefits for teachers in Head Start" (the federal child care program for young, low-income children).
To boost supply, HHS has been asked to improve the process for how providers apply for child care assistance to build/improve facilities on tribal lands. The 19th notes there are some 500,000 American Indian and Alaska Native children under 5 need access to child care.
To increase pay for caregivers of older adults and people with disabilities, the administration wants more transparency in how Medicaid funding is allocated by home care agencies.
The 19th says it's "unclear how much of the executive order is immediately actionable or how quickly American families and care workers will feel a difference in their lives."
WOMEN'S TOP ECONOMIC CONCERNS — Women say their top challenges to economic mobility include inflation, housing costs, low wages and poor supply of better-paying jobs. That's according to researchers who asked a diverse group of women: "What would the economy look like if it worked for you?" The findings were shared exclusively with The 19th. Political discourse, typically run by white men, means women are an afterthought, researchers said. In addition to asking women about the issues facing them, they also asked what policy changes they'd like to see. Top of the list? Solutions around the nature of work (flexible schedules, improving the gender pay gap), for the federal government (cover rising costs, raising minimum wage, enacting a paid national leave policy and increasing access to affordable child care. Researchers noted the strong consensus in challenges and solutions across racial, ethnic, socioeconomic and gender identity groups.
Bottom line: The path forward, for women, at least, is becoming clear. Here’s hoping the 2024 elections feature care infrastructure and everything important to women as substantive issues that need thoughtful and impactful solutions asap.
BREADWINNING MAMAS: MORE HOUSEWORK, LESS FREE TIME — The number of women in opposite-sex marriages who out-earn their husbands has tripled since the 1970s... but they're still doing more unpaid labor around the home, per a new Pew Research study.
Even when women are the sole breadwinner... they STILL spend the same amount of time as their husbands on household chores each week.
In all, when women earn more, they spend about 3.5 hours more per week on caregiving and household duties than their husbands.
In so-called egalitarian marriages, where men and women earn about the same... men spend about 3.5 more hours per week on leisure activities than their wives.
These trends hold women back, gender expert Kate Mangino, the author of "Equal Partners: Improving Gender Equality at Home,” told CBS News.
"The effect is that some women report not being able to reach their professional and income potential — they feel they can't volunteer for that trip, even if it might lead to a promotion, because of the work at home," she said.
Researchers broke marriages down into five types, with husbands or wives being primary or sole breadwinner, and when they’re egalitarian (both contribute 40-60% of household income.)
It’s pretty remarkable to look at how the face of breadwinners has changed: men had been the only/leading breadwinner for 85% of marriages in 1972. Fifty years later, that’s down to 55%.
Researchers said declining family size can contribute to greater earning power for women, as can greater education. Women now outnumber men attending college by nearly 2:1, per a 2022 report by the St. Louis Federal Reserve.
Researchers surveyed people on their views of women and men’s roles in and out of the home and little has changed. "I think public attitudes are kind of lagging behind the economic realities that husbands and wives are facing these days," Kim Parker, Pew’s director of social trends research told NPR.
Bottom Line: Maddening. We have to horde our leisure time and treat it like diamonds not sand (as Eve Rodsky says). 💎🙅♀️⏳
Jabba the Hut is my leisure time goals.
UNPAID CAREGIVING OF ADULTS TOPS $600 BILLION — The amount of unpaid care provided by millions of family caregivers of adults rose 28% from 2019 to 2021, to reach $600 billion, a new AARP report says. This includes care for older adults and those with health conditions requiring care. The report estimates that 38 million people (11.5% of the U.S. population) are “family caregivers.” The figure is based on them providing an average of 18 hours of care per week (read: 36 billion total a year across the U.S.) at an average value of $16.59 per hour. To put it in perspective, the total amount of unpaid care far exceeds what the U.S. spends on out-of-pocket health care costs a year ($433 billion). Also of note:
Some 60% of family caregivers work either full or part-time. The estimate does not include the economic impact of their lost wages or their out-of-pocket costs.
Some 30% of them are considered "sandwiched" in that they live in a home with children or grandchildren, meaning they're caring for elders and youngers.
This type of caregiving is also skewing younger. The number of caregivers who are under 45 quintupled in the past two decades. The New York Times recently did a deep-dive into this phenomenon, headlined: “The Agony of Putting Your Life on Hold to Care for Your Parents.”
“I always knew it would happen. But it happened 30 years sooner for me than I ever anticipated,” Adrienne Glusman told the New York Times. At 29, she took care of her mother in the final decade of her life and now hosts the podcast “Young Life Interrupted.”
The cost includes time, lost wages and those out-of-pocket costs, like making a house wheelchair accessible — all adding up to a “care tax,” writes Nicole Jorwic, the Chief of Advocacy and Campaigns at Caring Across Generations, in The Hill.
“The financial weight crushing families across the country due to our lack of care infrastructure can no longer be ignored,” she said.
Bottom line: One of the reasons I started this newsletter (beyond the crushing reality so many of us were facing in the pandemic and the lack of meaningful news coverage about it) — is that our demographics are changing so quickly and caregiving is going to burden our entire economy (more so than it already does) in the years ahead. It is estimated by 2034, adults 65 and older will outnumber children under 18… meaning there will be more of a need for care and far fewer people to do it. More lives interrupted and more strain on the economy. If we don’t fix the infrastructure to absorb/deal with/solve this imbalance asap, I believe there will be no part of our economy that is untouched.
Signing off
Thanks3, as always, for reading. Please send feedback, your Jabba leisure goals and latest TV obsessions. If you found value in Caregiving Crisis, please share with a friend. See you soon.
Caregiving Crisis is a newsletter written by Emily Fredrix Goodman. We aim to publish monthly-ish and other things may get in the way.
I 100% suggested they wear costumes when the idea was first broached (ok, I broached it was like PLEASE GO TO THE MOVIES AND LEAVE ME BE) and they did not. But for the record, they should have.
Please don’t assume that any free time I get is spent writing! Fact: all I want in life is to watch TV and I have been making TIME for it lately. (Priorities!) In the past two weeks I’ve inhaled: Beef on Netflix (🚗🛻🤬🥩), Somebody Somewhere on HBO or whatever they’re calling it now… is it Max?! (👩🌾🎼💗) and Jury Duty on Amazon (⚖️🎭🫂). So I am giving myself a bit o’ time doing this before catching up on Working Moms (💪👩🍼).
The Goodmen are home now. The younger has immediately started watching and ACTING OUT a Transformers movie. It has been raining for two full days. Send halp and chocolate.