Caregiving Crisis: Let's talk about work, baby
Let’s talk about you and me. Let’s talk about all the good things and the bad things that may be. Let’s talk about work. (uh huh) Let’s talk about work.
Hey everyone,
Caregiving is a cycle, parent to child and, as the years pass, child to parent. Friend, writer and all-around interesting human Virginia Citrano has been living the pandemic caregiving life with her elderly mother. This week she shares her experience and how it has inspired her to plan for her future caregiving needs. We’re all headed there, if we’re lucky. Take it away, Virginia:
I am one of the 45 million Americans who care for an elderly person, but not because I am paid to do so. Caregiving for my elderly mother during COVID-19 has been both harder and easier than it was before the pandemic.
Through a variety of unfortunate circumstances, my parents had nothing in their retirement accounts when they stopped working. Their Social Security benefits, and a very minor pension, covered rent and necessities before my dad died. But the readjustment after his passing made that much more tenuous. And so mom, who turned 90 earlier this year, went to live with her children.
As a caregiver to an elderly person, I’ve had to learn to use a transfer chair to get mom in and out of the shower safely. I’ve learned how to lift her off the floor when she has missed her chair or her bed. I’ve learned to manage a long list of pills that all look the same. I’ve learned to navigate the tangle of rules and forms for Medicare and Medicaid. I’ve learned to not say “don’t you remember” because she doesn’t.
Before COVID, my sisters and I had pooled money to pay for an outside caregiver while we were at work. But when the virus surged we let that person go to limit the chances that COVID would spread in our homes. That was a difficult decision because paid caregivers often earn little more than minimum wage and they have their own families to support.
So how has home caregiving been easier in the pandemic? I’ve been lucky enough to keep my day job and luckier still that my employer decided it could be done from home. Lucky because, with most of my co-workers juggling family and remote work, I wasn’t the only one whose Zoom meeting was interrupted by a loud demand for a change of TV channel or help going to the bathroom. (My home office is within earshot of the family room where mom spends her days.) It has been easier because mom’s supplemental health insurance provider decided it would cover telemedicine visits, sparing us the need to transport her and her wheelchair to a doctor’s office. Her church has figured out how to do Zoom masses. (Please let both continue when the pandemic is over.)
Caring for my mom has also helped me to focus on what my own caregiving needs will — and won’t — be when I get to be her age. Seeing her weak gait and unsteadiness, I’ve made time every day for online yoga or Tai Chi classes. I’ve shown my retirement account balance to my one surviving child so that he knows that I will not need to rely solely on Social Security or his unpaid care. (That also made it easier for him to understand why he needed to sign up for the 401(k) deduction when he got his first job.) I have reiterated to him that he is free to move wherever his career takes him and that, if I choose to move to that location, I’ve thought about how I could live there as independently as possible.
Being an unpaid caregiver to an elderly person in America has also given me a clear view of the many gaps in the American social safety net, gaps that friends caring for elderly parents in Italy and Canada don’t have. Social Security is a godsend, but it fails to cover things that could make aging safer, like eyeglasses and hearing aids. Most Americans would prefer to age in place, but Medicare doesn’t cover home modifications and neither do most states and municipalities.
None of what I’ve said about the difficulty of being a caregiver to an elderly person is news to anyone who has studied caregiving or worked as a paid caregiver. AARP has found that eldercare problems were the cause of an annual $5.1 billion in absenteeism and $17.1 billion to $33.6 billion in lost productivity.
I’m worried about where the country is heading. By 2035, the U.S. will have more older people than younger people for the first time in history, and the people who will be caring for these older people will be older working women, just like I am now.
Maybe it’s time for a conversation about how we’re going to manage it.
— Virginia Citrano, who says life is a bit of a rollercoaster now. Also she is terrified of rollercoasters:
Emily again. 👋 Thank you so much to Virginia for sharing her story. I too am frightened about the trends and that’s why I feel urgency in addressing this crisis. It’s only going to get worse. New studies are showing the toll that caring for elderly family members is taking. Caregiving in the pandemic caused these family members more stress and significantly higher rates of anxiety, depression and disturbed sleep, according to a NYT story. Could relief be coming? Just this month bipartisan legislators introduced the Credit for Caring Act in the House and Senate. The bill would provide up to $5,000 in federal tax credit for eligible working family caregivers. (AARP)
Have a caregiving story or know someone who does? Please message me for inclusion in a future issue.
This week we’re focusing on the working world1. What’s to come, what’s happening now and what’s at risk if school’s don’t fully reopen. Hang in there and see you soon.
What To Know About the Caregiving Crisis This Week
NEWS WATCH: ROUNDUP — Keeping tabs on legislation, regulation and conversation:
Child tax credit payments will be sent out in July. The first-ever direct payments for children are expected to halve child poverty in the U.S. They expire after a year, but lawmakers are working on extending the benefits. Here's what to expect, per CNET:
Families meeting income and eligibility requirements will receive $300 a month for kids under 6, and $250 a month for kids between ages 6 and 17.
Individuals who make $75,000 or less qualify for the entire amount.
Married couples filing jointly earning $150,000 or less qualify for a partial payment.
But single parents are at a disadvantage and lawmakers are trying to change this, reports WaPo’s The Lily. Those filing as heads of household — usually single parents — qualify for credits up to a max of $112,500 in salary. Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.), a single mother, is trying to get that boosted to $150,000. “No child ought to receive less help just because of the marital status of their parents,” Porter told The Lily.
Big companies are banding together to tackle caregiving. JPMorgan Chase, McDonald's, Spotify and 200 other businesses are forming the Care Economy Business Council, led by Time's Up.
The aim is to demand federally funded family and medical leave, affordable childcare and care for older relatives, along with higher wages for caregiving workers. The New York Times reports this group "is a strong signal that fixing the crumbling care systems for children and older people is essential to the economic recovery." The crisis means an opportunity to rebuild and reimagine the nation’s care infrastructure, says Care.com CEO Tim Allen.
“More than $11 trillion dollars of unpaid care work is done annually, primarily by women and women of color, and the lack of care solutions is driving them from the workforce. To stem that tide and fuel female workforce participation, the government and business communities must work together to drive the change we need,” Allen said.
States and tribes have never had so much money for childcare but how do you fix a system that was so broken? The funding, writes the 19th, "could transform child care industries that have been neglected for decades, but they'll have to do it with small departments and outdated systems." The American Rescue Plan included $39 billion for child care, making it the single largest such allocation in U.S. history. It's more money than the U.S. has spent on child care in the past five years combined. States and tribes have the money as one-time payments and now they're working through guidance on how best to use it. But there are problems:
One in seven child care jobs have disappeared since the start of 2020. The workforce is 95% women.
At year-end 2020, one in four child care centers remained closed, per estimates by a child care management software provider.
"The case has been made for investing in child care, but the solution looks less like renovating an industry and more like rebuilding it from the ground up." — The 19th
Bottom line: I can’t wait to see the transformation the child tax credit payments have, but the unequal allotment for single parents needs to be fixed. Big companies stepping up to fight for caregiving — under the leadership of TIME’S UP — is huge. It seems like there is some momentum. We’re getting on the right track, now we run the race.
POST-PANDEMIC HYBRID WORK COULD HINDER WOMEN’S GAINS — Companies must ensure post-pandemic remote work policies are utilized equally across genders, otherwise working women risk losing hard-fought gains, The Lily reports. There are a lot of issues and it comes down to preferences and biases. When men and women are offered flexibility in equal measures, mothers are more likely to choose to work from home rather than fathers or those without kids, said Jennifer Glass, a sociology professor at University of Texas at Austin. This could lead to stigmas against working moms post-pandemic, if they’re less likely to be in the office. Men could end up with more professional opportunities, including face-time with colleagues and management. This could derail advancements women have made at work and further widen the gender wage gap (more below), reports BBC. Just as terrible, the workplace could turn into Workaholics2.
The solution? Employers must establish "guardrails," Sian Beilock, president of Barnard College, who has written about gender and remote work, told The Lily. Tips: monitor how often men and women take advantage of working remotely and encourage employees to be conscious of making up for lost face-time when others go back to the office. For example, set up regular one-on-ones with managers and others, to ensure you’re in the loop.
Bottom line: Companies will have to change their cultures and they shouldn’t put the onus on workers to do it. Top down, please. Comments like the tone deaf one the CEO of WeWork made the other week (and later apologized for) must stop. Fixed it for you, Sandeep!
SCHOOL REOPENINGS ARE A GENDER EQUALITY ISSUE — The biggest issue in gender equality this year “may well be whether schools return to near-normal this fall,” reports the New York Times. Women with young kids are working at rates far below normal and far below other groups, according to new Moody's data, as women are saddled with dealing with hybrid or online school. Men with young kids seem to have had the smallest change in labor force participation since the pandemic started, faring better than men and women with no young kids. That’s a head-scratcher, but I guess they’re depending on their wives? Check out the chart and see red3.
Now look at another version of this chart by Brookings — it breaks down labor force participation rates for parents depending on how old their kids are and whether they're partnered. It’s easy to see how mothers of younger children and single mothers are most at risk if schools don’t open up.
Generally speaking, evidence indicates schools can safely return to normal hours this fall, the NYT concludes, with teachers being vaccinated and vaccines in the works for kids. The best outcome for women is to skip the hybrids and go back to school full time, says Emily Oster, an economist at Brown University who studies parenting.
“It’s not enough to sort of open,” Oster said. “We are going to need to figure out how to make it possible to open normally.”
Bottom line: News this week that New York City is planning a full reopening in the fall (and no online school) is promising. Vaccine approval and distribution for kids is another important part of this equation, and that’s looking promising too.
MOMS MAKE 75 CENTS FOR EVERY DOLLAR A WORKING DAD MAKES — So we’ve looked at what’s to come for women if/when/how they return to the workplace AND how they’ll face hurdles depending on what happens with school. Now let’s look at how much moms make at work. Spoiler alert: moms are underpaid! 🤦♀️
On average, U.S. moms working full-time are paid 75 cents for every dollar paid to fathers, according to a new analysis from the National Women's Law Center, reported by CNBC. The pay gap amounts to a loss of $1,275 a month, or $15,300 a year in wages. And this is for the moms/caregivers who haven't left their jobs during the pandemic.
Now let’s look at the wage gap for moms by demographic. We see again and again, women of color are disproportionately hurting. Latina moms are losing out on $38,000 a year and Black moms, $33,600 — more than double the aggregate gap for all moms relative to dads.
Bottom line: Women and their entire families suffer when they aren't paid what they're owed. This gap is particularly burdensome on single parents and women of color, who are more likely to be their family's main source of economic support, CNBC says. Expect to see the wage gap widen further as moms who had left the workforce return, NWLC Director of Research Jasmine Tucker told CNBC Make It. “We’re going to see a lot of women who didn’t have savings re-enter the labor force at a much lower level than when they left because it’s like ’I need a job, any job, to be able to make ends meet.”
AREA MOM STILL WAITING FOR THAT BUBBLE BATH — The Famed Bathtub Photo by Caregiving Crisis reader extraordinaire and mom phenom Heidi Metcalfe Lewis continues to generate media coverage, drawing attention to the plight. Good Morning America recently talked to Heidi about the picture, the attention it’s getting and why the system is broken.
"It took on a life of its own from there," Lewis said of the photo’s launch on social media. "We're all showing each other how burned out and exhausted we are, but what's being done? I don't want a Hallmark card, I want a policy change."
Bottom line: Confidential to Heidi:
Signing off
Thanks, as always, for reading. Please send feedback, articles, gifs, your stories — or any ‘must reads/watch/do/wear/eat’ for a Tired Mom Summer roundup coming soon to you. If you find value in this newsletter, please spread the word.
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.
Popping this here. Fiercest work queens.
Wonderful show, that Workaholics. But no one wants to work like that.
Here you go.