Feminism and caregiving

Feminism saved me when I was young. I grew up with abuse from my mother and grandmother, and my reaction was not to want to be a woman. By the time I got to college, planning to major in astrophysics, my way of being was to be one of the guys. Feminism saved me from being totally male-identified--it gave me a way to accept being a woman without becoming my mother or grandmother.

As a teenager, I didn't expect that I would ever marry or have children. I married only in my early 30s, with the understanding that John and I would equally share household tasks and with a prenuptual agreement (which my lawyer now tells me will provide some protection for my assets if we need to get John onto Medicaid). So into order to find myself in this new challenge I want to think about whether there is a feminist approach to caregiving.

I did a little web searching on the topic. I may just have to track down a special issue of a journal on Fundamentals of Feminist Gerontology. The trouble is, the focus is likely to all be on daughters caring for mothers. I found one article that argues that too many studies focus on how women put their own health at risk while caregiving and asserts there should be more focus on the autonomy of older women rather than their role as caregivers. Not what I am looking for.


Norman DeLisle, MDRC
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U.S.A. Gov Helps Long-Distance Caregivers

USA.gov, the U.S. government’s official web portal, now links to Caring from a Distance, a web site dedicated to the seven million Americans who manage the needs of seniors who live hundreds or thousands of miles away.

A CBS poll found that four in ten who have had the experience of caring for aging parents say issues involving care can be stressful and can lead to disputes among family members.

Caring from a Distance was founded to bring caregivers seeking help needed information and resources at-a-glance. Our goal is to utilize a range of communication and social networking technology to reduce caregiver stress through improved family communication.

For more information, visit cfad.org

Caregivers Find Unexpected Emotional Rewards in Tending for Family Members

Nearly 80% of family caregivers are finding the caregiving experience emotionally rewarding, despite initial negative perceptions of caregiving, according to a nationwide survey by Caring Today magazine.

Published in conjunction with National Family Caregivers Month this past November, the Caring Today survey shows that caregivers have distinctly more positive feelings after caring for a family member than they did as they were about to take on the responsibility. The number of caregivers finding the experience highly rewarding jumped by 50% following the caregiving experience.

Caring for an elder exacts financial toll

The out-of-pocket cost of caring for an aging parent, spouse or loved one averages about $5,500 a year, according to the nation’s first in-depth study of such expenses, a sum that is more than double previous estimates and more than the average American household spends annually on health care and entertainment combined.

Family members responsible for ailing loved ones provide not only “hands-on” care but often reach into their own pockets to pay for many other expenses of care recipients, including groceries, household goods, drugs, medical co-payments and transportation. That nudges the average cost of providing long-distance care to $8,728 a year.

Caregivers Increasingly File Lawsuits Against Employers Alleging Discrimination

The number of lawsuits stemming from "family responsibilities discrimination," or discrimination against employees who have family care-giving responsibilities at home, has increased by 400% in the last 10 years, according to the Center for WorkLife Law at the University of California, USA Today reports. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission also has reported an "upsurge" in cases, many of which result in awards to plaintiffs, and recently has issued its first guidance for employers about the issue.

According to USA Today, the lawsuits -- which usually involve workers who care for a child, elderly parent or spouse with a disability -- "generally fall under three areas":

• Employees claiming an employer denied leave or retaliated against a worker for taking time off to care for a child, which is covered by the federal Family and Medical Leave Act;
  
  
• Employees who allege employers violated the federal Americans with Disabilities Act by denying workers accommodations to care for a relative with a disability; and
  
  
• Employees who allege gender discrimination, such as women with young children who claim they are not given the same treatment as new fathers.

Stressed Caregivers Have Decreased Lifespan

The chronic stress that spouses and children develop while caring for Alzheimer's disease patients may shorten the caregivers' lives by as much as four to eight years, a new study suggests.

The research also provides concrete evidence that the effects of chronic stress can be seen both at the genetic and molecular level in chronic caregivers' bodies.

The findings, reported this month by researchers from Ohio State University and the federal National Institute of Aging, were published in the Journal of Immunology.

These are the latest results from a nearly three-decade-long program at Ohio State investigating the links between psychological stress and a weakened immune status. Previous studies have examined medical students, newlyweds, divorced spouses, widows, widowers and long-married couples, in each case, looking for physiological effects caused by psychological stress.

In their recent study, Ronald Glaser, a professor of molecular virology, immunology and medical genetics, and Jan Kiecolt-Glaser, a professor of psychology and psychiatry, teamed with Nan-ping Weng and his research group from the National Institute of Aging.

Earlier work by other researchers had shown that mothers caring for chronically ill children developed changes in their chromosomes that effectively amounted to several years of additional aging among those caregivers.

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Growing Number Of Children, Teenagers Becoming Caregivers To Ill, Elderly Relatives

A growing number of children and teenagers are taking on the responsibility of caring for family members with debilitating illness, the Washington Post reports. As many as 1.4 million young people ages eight to 18 in the U.S. care for a chronically ill or disabled relative, according to a 2005 survey by the United Hospital Fund and the National Alliance for Caregiving.

Tasks performed by young caregivers can include providing companionship, running errands, balancing checkbooks and changing feeding tubes or adult diapers. The 2005 study found that mood swings and antisocial behavior are more common among teenage caregivers than their peers, and they also have increased rates of missing school or after-school activities.