Caregiving Crisis: Here we go again on our own
School is starting and everything is terrible. Hair band Whitesnake were caregiving-in-the-pandemic prophets don't @ me.
Hey everyone,
I’d been mulling a couple of different angles for this week’s theme. The world is your dead, stinky oyster when you’re choosing from all the dumpster fires raging lately to feature in your newsletter that helps you avoid (completely) screaming into the void. Afghanistan. The terror facing women in Afghanistan. Haiti. Rising COVID-19 variants, cases and hospitalizations. School restarting. Still no vaccines for kids but now we need booster shots? Fires everywhere. That ‘terrifying’ UN climate report. Burn. Out.
And then a series of emails that could have been conjured only by the Norse god of chaos Loki1 on Wednesday really solidified my angle.
Presenting my inbox from Wednesday along with what my brain heard as I read the contents of each email:
11:13 am2 - The local YMCA (the ONLY provider of aftercare in town and our personal familial patron saint of childcare) says they don’t have enough workers for aftercare this school year3 and can we please ask our jobs if we can stay remote longer and also can we unenroll our kids so there are enough spaces for the kids who really need it please and thank you.
12:30 pm - The school district says yeah, they’re enforcing a minimum seven days of quarantines for unvaccinated kids (even with a negative test) who travel beyond states that border ours.4 So if you want your kid to go to school the first week, please cut short your vacation or trip to see family which you so desperately need, please and thank you. OR you can go and probably for the last time in many months get some actual family help for a day or two of a breather or, I dunno, go to the beach and enjoy the weather before we are all locked in our homes again. But you’ll pay the price later when your kids are going to be learning on their laptops. From home. Again. And also, it doesn’t matter how safe you are when you travel, even if you’re going to what your nephew calls ‘Old Man Town’ and are just visiting family at their home a few hundred miles away. What matters is you left the state of New Jersey. The people who stay home but act reckless, they won’t have to make these choices. K THANKS!
1:33 pm - Remember that Hail Mary you tossed in the form of trying to get your kid under 12 into a Pfizer & BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine Pediatric Study so many months ago you don’t even remember when you signed up in a fit of panic one night when you were up too late because it’s the only time you get to yourself? Yeah, the response was unprecedented because all parents are FREAKING OUT. But hey, we don’t have space for you. Or actually anyone because it’s not happening in your area. BYE!
Me:
What. Is. Going. On.
All I can think is that we don’t know where we’re going, but we know where we’ve been. This fall and school year represent, in many ways, an even worse situation than last year. Ignorance was its own screwed up bliss. Now we know damn well what we’re up against. And it’s terrifying.
In the words of 80s hairband Whitesnake5: Here we go again on our own. This prophecy has been circling in my head with every tightening of my chest, sigh exchanged with fellow parents and gasp at headlines I see. (Check out the panic-inducing ones below.)
Society and our broken systems have made perfectly clear that we are alone.
Caregivers need support, we need a better system. The mess is out in the open. We need to fix this. THEY need to fix this. Our bodies and psyches cannot take more of this. If I get another series of emails like that, my eyes may permanently be stuck at the top of my head.
As I was doomscrolling Twitter this week — even before my chaotic trio of messages — I found the perfect summary of the predicament for this fall and beyond. Once again, Katherine Goldstein, host of The Double Shift podcast about motherhood in the U.S., gets right at the heart of the matter.
Sigh. It’s true. Can you imagine a society that cares less about parents and kids?
The thought of what caring less would even look like makes my head hurt. It’s insulting, short-sighted and terrible. Oof. We’ll keep talking and pushing, fighting the fight. Updates below on the massive infrastructure bill, and amazing efforts by Gen Z to push for caregiving change — even when they’re not yet caregivers themselves.
Thanks for being here and welcome to our new joiners. Read more about why I started this newsletter. Have a caregiving story or know someone who does? Please message me for inclusion in a future issue. Hang in there and see you soon. I’m taking a Labor Day break, so see you next on Sept. 10.
What To Know About the Caregiving Crisis This Week
NEWS WATCH: ROUNDUP — Keeping tabs on legislation, regulation and conversation:
INFRASTRUCTURE LATEST: THESE BILLS ARE CONFUSING, AND WHITE HOUSE PUSHES IT REAL GOOD— President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris continue to push for support around their infrastructure package, and Congress continues to fight over it all. There’s a lot of bills and tbh it’s hard to keep track of it all.
House Democrats expect to move next week to pass "sprawling economic plans" (CNBC), but disagreements among the party may curb the passage of two bills. The party wants passage of the $1 billion infrastructure bill passed by the Senate and a bill worth up to $3.5 billion to improve social programs (aka caregiving.) The House next week could follow the Senate's lead, and some maneuvering means it could get through Congress without a Republican vote.
NYT editorial writer says stop this madness and support caregivers already, especially ones taking care, full-time, of younger AND older people. Michelle Cottle breaks it down:
The Better Care Better Jobs Act would give states extra Medicaid funding for doing things like increasing wages/benefits of direct-care workers, improving training, easing access to families.
The Social Security Caregiver Credit Act would give retirement compensation for people who left jobs to look after family members.
The Credit for Caring Act would provide federal tax credits to eligible family caregivers.
And the American Families Plan calls for 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave, "an idea that should have been embraced long ago." '
“They assist in dressing, bathing and feeding some of the most vulnerable among us, helping them cope with the aches and pains and fears and frustrations of growing older. They deserve better than to be casually abandoned. It’s worth remembering that many of us will eventually find ourselves among their ranks,” Cottle writes.
Biden took to the socials to share his story about being a single dad and caregiving.
Last week Harris met with business leaders to build support around child care in the infrastructure package, noting it's instrument to recruiting and retaining talent. (NYT)
“We know that it directly impacts worker productivity and the bottom lines of your businesses,” Harris said.
GIRLS ABSORB CAREGIVING DUTIES, STRESS — Some one in three girls' education suffered last year because of heightened caregiving responsibilities. A new report by the Alliance for Girls says "the pandemic demolished a delicate support system for girls" and those who identify as girls or are non-binary or gender-nonconforming, yielding more stress than ever as they suffered mostly in isolation, says Prism Reports, a BIPOC-led non-profit news outlet (story elevated by the 19th). Nearly one in two girls reported taking on additional domestic work at home, including caregiving for younger siblings -- something that occured pre-pandemic but was compounded as child care centers and schools closed. Black and brown woman have been most hurt by job loss and health issues by the pandemic, and that translated into heightened levels of stress for girls too.
THE 19th NAMES CAREGIVING REPORTER — The non-profit news outfit focused on women and people of color said this week it has hired Sara Luterman to cover the caregiving beat. She brings a deep background in covering caregiving, the 19th said, noting a particular strength in how caregiving intersects with issues around disabilities. Here's her Twitter. We're thrilled that such resources are being devoted to covering this crisis.
GEN Z TO EMPLOYERS: PSST WE CARE ABOUT CAREGIVING — This is a societal issue and bless them, Gen Z gets it. A new effort called the “Pledge to Care” by Project Matriarchs aims to get Gen Z (and any others who wish to support) to sign the pledge with the goal of letting future employers know that this generation demands support for caregivers at all economic levels. “As the talent that companies will soon be recruiting, our generation has collective bargaining power to leverage towards corporate change,” reads the pledge. Lola McAllister and Pilar McDonald, friends since childhood and now 20 years old, launched Project Matriarchs last year as a way to help connect college tutors with children of working parents of all types, to get them some free time and relieve their burdens. I spoke with Lola and Pilar this past week and wow, floored by their insight, knowledge and empathy. We’ll have a lot more to write about them in coming weeks. LinkedIn gave them some great coverage this week about their goal to hit 250,000 signatures and Arianna Huffington says she’s getting behind it. Please consider signing the pledge, which tackles paid leave, equitable hiring, returnship programs and more.
Bottom line: I’m going to let Lola and Pilar, wise beyond their years, sum it up.
“I very much feel like I'm doing this for my future self but also for the future of my peers, especially those with fewer visible privilege than I have,” — Pilar McDonald, co-founder and co-director of Project Matriarchs.
“The way we undervalue caregiving is so cultural, there is an opportunity for companies to be leaders and pioneers around this and if companies set a standard that's above what the government currently offers, that raises all of our standards and all of our understanding,” — Lola McAllister, co-founder and co-director of Project Matriarchs.
A BUNCH OF TERRIBLE HEADLINES ABOUT SCHOOL REOPENING — I’m too busy stress-eating popcorn to write about this. An assortment of recent educational doomsday headlines that speak for themselves (all headlines link to stories, if you dare):
Bottom line: ::shoves nearest cereal into face:: Um, thanks, Idina?
MOMS RAMPING UP AT WORK FACE PAY CUTS, DIMINISHED ROLES — Jobs numbers may be showing women/mothers returning to the workforce after taking time off to deal with the pandemic, but they're now facing a different reality. The Los Angeles Times reports that women returning to the workforce after taking time off for caregiving face weakened job security, pay equity and long-term career opportunities — "losses many will likely never recover." Mothers endured pay cuts, reduced hours, slashed retirement benefits and lost promotions in the pandemic, often by choice. And those moms wanting to get back to work are now making far less and seeing their dreams derailed. Kelly Mann, of North Carolina, told the LAT she's now making one-fourth of her previous salary after giving up her "dream job" in education software. At 49, Mann said, “I’m very much at the age where, when you leave a career at the level I was at, it’s going to be extremely challenging to re-enter.” This is a problem for mothers now that will follow them throughout their career, said Misty Heggeness, a senior advisor and research economist at the U.S. Census Bureau (a caregiving sage). For many mothers, “their entire lifetime earnings trajectory is stunted and on a totally different path because they’re pulling back today,” she said.
Even salaries aside, the rise of remote work from home will not help women's careers, either, Heggeness said.
“If they’re pulling back today, they’re not at the meeting when the boss says, ‘Hey, anybody want to volunteer to lead this new project?’” Heggeness said. “They’re not there at the meeting, and when a promotion is available, they’re not selected.”
Bottom line: Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Parents are in a terrible spot and the thinking needs to move from a ‘this is THEIR problem’ to a ‘this is OUR problem.’ We’re depriving the economy of workers and people and their families of salaries that all goes back into the economy. ::shakes fist at sky::
Signing off
Thanks, as always, for reading. Please send feedback, employees for our local YMCA’s aftercare, businesses that want to start their own aftercare, or a note so you’re not screaming into the void. If you found value in Caregiving Crisis, please consider sharing with a friend.
Caregiving Crisis is a newsletter written by Emily Fredrix Goodman. We aim to publish every other week but other things may get in the way.
NB - I’m talking about the Loki from the Avengers movies. He was really a jerk. But have you seen the Loki show on Disney+? I feel like he’s a changed guy?! We would all be humbled if we met an alternate version of ourselves that was an alligator.
Technically came in at 10:29 to my husband’s account. For some reason I don’t get these emails from the Y although I get most others in triplicate. This is when he forwarded it to me…just as I was taking our son…to the Y. 🤦♀️