Disrupting Elder Care: We Need To Talk More About Working Daughters
Episode 468 | Host: Emilie Aries | Guest: Liz O’Donnell
How do you balance caring for your aging parents and your career without burning out?
We organize so much in our lives. We plan our workdays, our meals, our weekends. Many of us even plan how and when we might introduce children into our busy lives. Incorporating the care of our aging parents or other loved ones, however, is not something we can choose to weave into our lives when it’s convenient. When a mother receives a terminal diagnosis, a father’s memory loss intensifies, an in-law loses their driver’s license—these unfortunate events often happen without warning, and suddenly, you might be in the thick of leveling up your career, staying on top of your daily obligations, and maybe even raising young children when you’re thrust into the additional role of caregiver for the elderly.
This is what happened to Liz O’Donnell, and after more than a decade in the field, she is a recognized expert on working while caregiving. In 2015, she launched Working Daughter to address an area she identified as woefully underserved. The organization supports women balancing elder care on top of their careers and all the other demands of adult life. In this episode, Liz shares her expertise and some of the discoveries outlined in her 2019 book, Working Daughter: A Guide to Care for Your Aging Parents While Making a Living.
How does society support working daughters?
The short answer is, it doesn’t.
Ten thousand Americans turn 65 every day. Is it any wonder, then, that more adults in the midst of their working years are facing caring for their aging parents while they also juggle full-time jobs, social and community demands, and, in many cases, child care? Given this influx of ”sandwich generation” workers burning the candle at both ends, there should be as much corporate and governmental support out there as there is for childcare, right?
We know that even childcare support is hugely lacking in this country, so maybe it’s not surprising that policies around elder care have been painfully slow to come to fruition. Liz acknowledges that the pandemic shed some light on these issues (due in part to the influx of people becoming and remaining sick with COVID), but it’s still far from sufficient.
Support for full- and part-time family caregivers is all over the map, she explains. Some states reimburse caregivers through Medicaid, and there are a few tax credits in action and in the works, but things differ wildly on a state-by-state basis. In the corporate world, private companies are beginning to add this layer into their benefits, but it’s simply happening too gradually for the number of people this issue is affecting.
Flexibility at work goes a long way
Part of Liz’s work includes consulting with corporations on developing elder care benefits packages, and flexibility is the first thing she recommends. During the pandemic, many of us learned the value of more flexible schedules as we settled into remote work. For one thing, the difference between being able to take a few hours off to run a parent to an appointment (and wait longer than expected, and then pick up their prescription or take them to the lab for bloodwork) or having to take the full day can have an enormous impact on what work gets done.
As with childcare and general life responsibilities, elder care would benefit enormously from a wholesale shift to outcome-oriented management. Liz notes that while what she gets done between 9 and 5 on a workday might horrify a traditional boss, what she achieves between 7 am and 9 pm is nothing short of incredible. An enormous strain would be lifted from people caring for their aging parents if more companies adopted the mindset that results matter more than butts in seats and face time in the office.
A safe place to talk about it
In addition to more flexible work options, the change Liz would most like to see in the area of elder care and working daughters is more talking about it. “It is a profound experience to care for somebody at that stage of their life, when they are in such a vulnerable place. But where do you talk about that?” Recognizing and having the space to process this massive identity shift can go a long way toward helping parental caregivers feel like they have a choice in the matter—and this sense of agency leads to a much better experience, however difficult the role.
Working Daughters offers just such a place to talk about what this group is going through. The website is packed with resources on what to expect and how to navigate this massive life transition, including a Working Daughters Bill of Rights that validates your right to keep living your life guilt-free while taking on this massive new role. Liz also runs a private Facebook community with almost 10,000 members, which offers a safe space to vent, ask advice, and feel less alone in what can be a very isolating endeavor. Members of the organization can also book time with Liz, during which she offers everything from an empathetic ear to literally waiting on hold for a service the client’s parent requires.
What can you do now to prepare?
In our conversation, Liz offers so much guidance around how working daughters can think about and act on the situations they’re facing. One way to mitigate the overwhelming blow of suddenly needing to care for an aging parent is to get a jump on the groundwork before the worst happens. Here are a few things you can start doing or thinking about right now:
Earn where you can, when you can. If parental care is a likely facet of your future, now is the time to push on the pursuit of your career goals and shore up your financial position as much as you can.
Figure out where the support systems are for when you need them. Who will pick up the kids from school if you have an elder care emergency?
Work with your parents to ensure you have all the information you might need one day, including financial, medical, and housing information, so you can step in and manage these specifics if or when the time comes. Of course, some loved ones will be more open to these discussions than others, but broaching the subject now will help you see where you stand and what other details you need to collect.
Liz covers such a vast array of information and advice in this episode. Whether you’re in the midst of elder care now, can foresee it happening in the future, or want to support a friend or family member who has taken on this heavy mantle, listen to our conversation to benefit fully from Liz’s expertise.
How has caring for an aging loved one impacted your career, or what concerns do you have about this pending responsibility? Visit the Courage Community on Facebook or join us in our group on LinkedIn to share your thoughts and experiences.
Related links from today’s episode:
Find resources on Working Daughter.com
Implement the Caregiving Basics
Order “Working Daughter: A Guide to Care for Your Aging Parents While Making a Living”
U.S. Department of Labor, “Older Women and Unpaid Caregiving in the U.S.”
Deloitte “Women @ Work 2024” Study
“The Crisis Facing America's Working Daughters” by Liz O’Donnell
The Wall Street Journal, “When Caring for Your Parents Comes at a Cost to Your Career”
The Working Daughter Bill of Rights
Episode 466, How Gen X Navigates Career Change
McKinsey & Co. Women in the Workplace Report
Level Up: a Leadership Accelerator for Women on the Rise
TAKE ACTION and advocate for improved
child and elder care policies:
-
[INTRO MUSIC IN]
EMILIE: Hey, and welcome to the Bossed Up podcast, episode 468. I'm your host, Emilie Aries, the Founder and CEO of Bossed Up. And today we're talking all about how to disrupt elder care so it doesn't disrupt your career.
[INTRO MUSIC ENDS]
I feel like we've talked a lot on this podcast about being a working mother, and today I want to make sure we're spending some overdue time, honestly, talking about the role of working daughter.
Now, joining me to break all of this down is a longtime friend of mine, Liz O'Donnell, who's an expert in this field not only based on her personal experience, but over a decade of starting the organization Working Daughter, writing books about this topic, and waiting for the broader feminist conversation around women in the workplace to catch up. I think Liz is a pioneer and just an incredible thought leader in the space. So I'm so delighted to have her on this podcast.
In fact, I thought I already had her on this podcast, but a few years back, I interviewed her when I was co-hosting The Stuff Mom Never Told You podcast. So this is her debut here on Bossed Up.
Now, Liz O'Donnell is the founder of Working Daughter, an organization which supports women balancing elder care, career, and more. An award winning writer, her book, Working Daughter: A Guide To Caring For Your Aging Parents While Earning A Living, was named one of the best books of the year by Library Journal. In 2020, she launched National Working Daughters Day. A former family caregiver, she's a recognized expert on working while caregiving. The AARP says, quote, few understand family caregivers as well as Liz, end quote.
She's written on the topic for many outlets, including the Atlantic and Harvard Business Review. She's been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Oprah magazine, and Health. Liz works with companies to create programs in support of working caregivers.
She also coaches individuals, creating personalized plans to help them navigate the caregiving years. Her first book, Mogul, Mom, And Maid: The Balancing Act Of The Modern Woman, which looks at the impact of women's personal lives on their careers, was an Amazon bestseller. Liz is also a contributor to managing your career, a Harvard Business Review press book for working parents. She, like me, has way too much going on, and I so admire her for that.
Liz, welcome to the Bossed Up podcast.
LIZ: Thank you.
EMILIE: Tell me a little bit about how you came to study the impact of caregiving and elder care on women's careers.
LIZ: Oh, because I lived it. And that was about a decade ago, right? I remember actually being at your event, first time I met you and spoke at one of your events. And my book had just come out about working motherhood. And somebody there asked me what I was going right next. And my parents had just started needing more and more care. And I said, oh, well, I'm really busy right now taking care of my parents and whoever it was at your event, kind of, you know, put their hands over their heart and tilted their face a little, was like, oh, how wonderful.
And in my head, I had just published this book, you know, my first book. I was so excited to get out there and promote it and see where things went with it. And all of a sudden, I couldn't. I had this new responsibility that I hadn't thought about at all. And I just remember this woman was like, oh, how wonderful to care for those who've cared for you. And in my head, I was like, no, the timing is terrible. This is not what I want. So anyway, immediately I shifted in my head to, nobody's talked about this. I didn't know this was coming at all. This is going to be a huge career impact. And I called my publisher of Mogul, Mom, and Maid, and I was like, I have a new idea. And they were like, liz, we just put a lot of money into Mogul, Mom, and Maid. We don't want to hear about a new idea. But it's all I could think about at that point. And I vowed, you know, sort of as I got through things, I would document it, write it down, and I would someday make sure no one else felt as alone, as unprepared as I did.
EMILIE: Right. And I remember that has turned into the conversation that you've really coined the term around, working daughters. Right? Not just working mothers who get a lot of ink, who get a lot of press. But I'll never forget that Atlantic article that came out back in 2016 that you wrote about the crisis facing America's working daughters. What was it like then in 2016? And maybe tell us more about your story as well, in terms of how you had to deal with and step in for your parents. But then let's also talk about how things have shifted post pandemic.
LIZ: Yeah. So, briefly, my story was shortly after I met you. When I met you, I was experiencing what I now call the caregiver creep. And this is that phase where our parents start to need more and more help. And we don't realize that we're caregivers. There's some staggering statistic, which I don't remember, but there are so many women who don't identify as caregivers.
I felt like I always did. Like, oh, my god, I'm taking care of my parents. I'm a caregiver. I immediately sort of took to the term, but I understand why women don't, because in this creep phase, this caregiver creep, which is what I was experiencing around that time in 2014, you just think you're being a good daughter. You don't realize that you've taken on a whole new role.
And for me, it was eventually, you know, both my parents stopped driving. So then it was taking them to the doctor. It was driving to see them. They're about an hour away every weekend to make sure they had groceries mowing their lawn. Then it was every Sunday night, sorting pills into little plastic boxes. And so it didn't, it doesn't really feel like a big thing. But if you're already, you know, say, a working mother, a full time job, other interests in life, and then you're fitting this into, our lives are already ridiculously jammed. And so, you know, I was just cranky and exhausted all the time, and I didn't even realize why.
And I think to, not to sidebar too much, but this, to me, is really important that people, especially managers, if we're talking about women in the workforce, understand where caregiving of elderly people versus children is so different. Like, not all professional women, but many professional women plan when they're going to become mothers, right? They think, I mean, I know it's not all in our control, but we think about, like, what's the best time for my finances and my career and my relationships. We physically plan the space in our home, you know, where we're going to fit this child into our life.
And with eldercare, there's no planning. Not only have we, not up until recently, even had conversations about it, we just haven't really thought that this might be something we're going to do. So we're not thinking about our finances, our relationships, the best times for our career, nor can we really, you know, because it could happen anytime.
EMILIE: So there's no agency. I think that's part of it, right? There's no agency involved. It feels like. And your time is already so limited, and that amount of time of caring for elders starts to just take over in a way that feels like you have. You're either a bad daughter, right, or you have no choice in the matter, and you have to be there. And then I can imagine the resentment that's inherent to that experience where your identity is shifting. You don't even know it. There's no ritual in society to celebrate it. There's no equivalent of a baby shower for elder care. Right?
LIZ: Right. No one throws you a party, and no one buys you gifts, and no one gives you advice.
EMILIE: Right. And nobody even applauds you for doing what you're doing, uh, including your own parents, who might be cranky along the way with you. So. Okay, wow. That's a really good point.
LIZ: Yeah. And no one even sees it. Right. It's really an invisible assignment. Yeah. So quickly back to my story. So I was going along in this creep phase, and then I entered the crisis phase, which is usually the other typical point, which is you get a phone call, somebody's sick, there's a diagnosis, a fall, whatever. And for me, both parents were diagnosed with terminal illnesses on the exact same day, like, within hours of each other. Series of events, my dad ended up in a Geriatric Psych facility where he was diagnosed with Dementia. He had been there for about a week. I went to meet with his team. That's when they gave me the diagnosis, told me he should go into Memory Care, left that meeting was in the parking lot. Hadn't even driven away.
My mom a few days before had stomach pain, had been sent to the hospital, and it was the doctor from another hospital telling me she had Ovarian cancer. So in one afternoon, you know, both parents had what were considered terminal illnesses. And so all of a sudden, it was, where are they gonna live? And how am I gonna care for them? And do they have money, and do they have wills, and do they have bills, etcetera, et cetera, etcetera. So that's my story in a nutshell.
EMILIE: And it's exhausting. I can. I can feel the exhaustion. I can. I can sort of see it coming, too. I think I'm selfishly interested in this topic. I hope my parents aren't listening to this. I doubt that they are. But like Brad and I, my husband and I both see it. And we're at this stage in our life where we're just welcoming little ones into our world, and we feel like we have already an overflowing plate. I can't imagine how we eventually make space for this.
So what advice or lessons learned about both? How we as individuals can hack into this system so that caregiving doesn't completely disrupt our careers. But also, what system change do you think should be better? Could be better in terms of support that's out there for caregivers who are predominantly women? The reason I specifically wanted to ask you about this now just has to do with how much more prevalent this is becoming for women in the workplace as of today. I think this has to do with just how much the pandemic has accelerated things.
But in the latest McKinsey & Co. Women in the Workplace report, they reported that elder care was really a big threat or a big trend this year, saying that nearly 60% of women who are involved in the care of another adult say that they take on the greatest responsibility for this. A significant increase from 44% who said so in 2023. So now 60% of people who are caregivers say that I do the majority of. Of the work, as opposed to sharing it with a sibling or sharing it with a partner. Only 5% say that this responsibility falls to their partner, a decrease from last year. So we think, you know, the feminist movement is moving in one direction. It's very much not when it comes to men shouldering their part of this labor as well. I just wonder what you make of that, that trend.
LIZ: Yeah, I was frustrated back in 2014, 15, 16, 17, when I was really starting to talk about, is that sort of the. Does anyone really own the feminist movement? I don't think so. Right. But, you know, outlets that were really focused on feminist topics still just weren't paying any attention to this. And I was like, it's coming, it's coming. And I think the pandemic definitely shed some light on it. Probably accelerated some things. I think there are a lot of people who are caregivers because of long COVID. I don't have the numbers on that, but it's looking like it's trending that way, but also just what's happening in our society.
So 10,000 people are turning 65 every day. 10,000 every single day. Because the boomer generation is so large, people are living longer than they used to, which means they're likely living with chronic illnesses. You know, like so, my four grandparents all died pretty quickly of cardiac, um, incidences. My parents both lived with cardiac health issues, but my dad lived to 91. So medicine has changed. Right?
So people are living longer and therefore probably will be ill and need care. Families are spread out. People are often caring for more than one or two parents. They're caring for steps, they're caring for in-laws. Yeah. And it is falling predominantly to women. I mean, more men are stepping in 60/40. That's not a huge split, but it's. Yeah, it's really impacting women. So that's why I think we're seeing so much of it. And so I think the good news is that we're starting to talk about it, but we are so behind the curve. So behind the curve.
EMILIE: That doesn't surprise me. Public policy is usually pretty glacial to respond to crises. I think the pandemic showed us how fast our government can move if it really wants to. But that key, if it really wants to, is very hard to galvanize. So what systemic support exists out there for caregivers?
I feel like I've heard fits and starts of caregiver compensation programs and other forms that might be available, but what, if any, support exists for, and not just those full time caregivers who have to completely drop out of the workforce, but the part time caregiving that you're describing, is there anything out there?
LIZ: It's kind of all over the map. And what makes it difficult? Medicaid and Medicare rules change by state. So what might be available to you is different than what's available to me. There are some states that do reimburse family caregivers. There are some tax credits, some that might actually be in play, but many that are being discussed. And like you said, it takes so long.
And I think our political environment in the last eight to ten years, too, has made it really difficult to shine a spotlight on this. I know I was really hopeful, not the last election, but the election before that, that this might become the topic, because I think it was. Was it Romney, Obama?
EMILIE: Yeah.
LIZ: Did they run against each other?
EMILIE: Yeah.
LIZ: Where motherhood and working motherhood was a main theme. And I was like, oh, the next election is going to be about elder care. Like, this is going to be it. And then things just went left, or not left, but sideways right in presidential campaigns. So that's made it difficult, too. It's hard to get any attention on this issue.
So anyway, so there are some tax credits, there's some Medicaid and Medicare, you know, reimbursement. I think it's Medicaid. More companies, but still slow, are starting to add to it, but so slow and so behind the curve. And then a lot of it's really private. I mean, so what is it that.
EMILIE: Companies can do to help with this if they are choosing to help with this?
LIZ: Flexibility is the number one thing that people ask for. And the conversation around this is often like, well, we have FMLA, we have the Family Medical Leave Act, which first you have to work for a company that can tap into FMLA, certain size, certain type of company. Then you have to qualify for FMLA if you're in one of those companies, meaning you have to work in the headquarters, have been there a certain amount of time, have so many people in the office. So FMLA actually isn't really that available to a lot of people.
EMILIE: And then it doesn't pay you anything, to be clear, right? It's just leave.
LIZ: It's unpaid leave, and it's not really how eldercare works. Eldercare isn't like one chunk of time, you know? So there was a great article in the Wall Street Journal on Sunday, yesterday, and the title was, When Caregiving Impacts Your Career, or something like that. I'm like, no. Yeah, and I was joking. Like, we could take the word when out of the headline. That's what it was. But one of the people they highlighted in the story was a man, actually. And he was like, FMLA didn't work for me because I didn't need a chunk of time all at once I need.
And FMLA, you can take over a period of time, but when? When do you take it? When there are intermittent doctor's appointments. So flexibility is the number one thing that people ask for, and that would really help people because. And by flexibility, I mean less focus on where we work and even when we work and more focus on what needs to get done and then giving people the flexibility to do that.
EMILIE: This is why the whole return to office movement, I put out an episode a couple weeks ago, is so stressful for women, because the flexibility, the movement towards flexibility while still practicing good management practices. Right? Just like having outcome oriented accountability as a culture, women thrive with that. If we can determine our process for getting to those outcomes, then we really thrive with that. And taking that away is like putting a genie back in the bottle after we've seen what can be done.
LIZ: It’s infuriating, and most likely commercial real estate driven. And they had plenty of years to figure this out. And it just, quite frankly, pisses me off.
EMILIE: I love that. Like, Bostonian and you coming out. It's like, yeah, tell me like it is, Liz. It's true.
[LAUGHTER]
LIZ: I mean, if I think about the way I've worked over the last ten years, Emilie, like, first of all, any sort of traditional male management point of view would be horrified at what I get done or what I do, you know, between nine and five, because it isn't all work. Right? But what I get done between, like, 7:00 a.m. and 9:00 p.m. is a lot. It is. So, I mean, I've written books, I've raised children, I've cared for people, and I've you know, done a kick*** job for clients, I was gonna say.
EMILIE: And to be clear, you have a full time job and have been running your own blog, your own company as well. I'm in the same boat as you, which is, like, kind of an insane amount of things that are on our plates, but it's doable.
LIZ: We might be crazy, but it's doable. So, yeah, so this idea of, you know, butts, uh, and seats and Facetime is just infuriating, you know, and if companies would lead with what as opposed to where and when, it would make such a huge difference. So, yeah, flexibility around what time you start, where and when you work. It can be the difference sometimes of taking an entire day off or taking a couple of hours off.
Like, when I used, I wrote a blog a long time ago about taking my dad to the doctor, and I was, you know, pretty seasoned caregiver at that point. I always got one of the first appointments, but I couldn't get it too early because, you know, he was old and tired and had some dementia. So I couldn't get him to a 9:00 a.m. in a cold blanket because it took a long time to get him out of the house and get him up ready, but I could get him to, like, a 10:30.
So I knew I wanted to get in earlier, you know, and then I could be back at the office by maybe. And I knew there were prescriptions that probably needed to be filled after that and blood work and, you know, so I wasn't, like, totally naive that a geriatric appointment was an hour. Like, I knew it was a few, right? But everything went south that day. Everything with the lab work and the, you know, having to get us something back to the doctor and, you know, so anyway, like, if you have to take a whole day off for that versus a few hours, that's where flexibility can become so important. So that's number one.
Number two, I would say, is talking about it, right? Like, people, the elder caregivers in the workplace feel invisible and they feel othered because it's barely talked about. And I've been complaining for many years that we treat it like a parenthetical. You know, it's like, because we're hearing more companies talk about it, we're seeing McKinsey mention it now in the Women In The Workplace, but they didn't for a few years. And if they do, it's, you know, women are pressured by lots of things, childcare, comma, and elder care. And then it goes on and has, like, pages about…
EMILIE: Childcare usually, I mean, it's sort of. There's something more valued in society, clearly, around childcare. Cause we talk about parental leave, maternity leave, as this, like, really important, precious thing. Right? If we're on at least the right side of history. Right? Like most people nowadays are saying, like, take all the time you need. Like, this is such a special time. Nobody talks about elder care that way.
LIZ: …Not at all. No. Because we don't talk about aging and dying. Yeah.
EMILIE: That's really the discomfort, isn't it?
LIZ: It is. I think it is. I don't think we value our elderly. You know, we, we. Yeah. So I don't think we value the elderly. Therefore we don't value caring for the elderly. And it's, you know, like motherhood. It's one of those things that you don't truly understand till you do it.
And then the other thing is, I think, you know, that's why I said. Talking about it sounds so simple. But I really think it's the number two thing, because it is profound. It is a profound experience to care for somebody at that stage in their life when they're in such a vulnerable place. It is a profound experience to usher somebody, you know, out of this world into wherever. But where do you talk about that? It's awkward, it's uncomfortable, and, uh, we certainly don't talk about it in the workplace. Whereas, like, if you're out with your girlfriends and there's some wine involved, I would guess at some point somewhere, maybe like a let's go over girls weekend or something, somewhere in that weekend, birth stories are going to come up, right? Yeah, like 37 hours, no epidural. Right? I mean, it just. We have space to talk about this incredibly profound experience, which is becoming a mother. There is no space to talk about this other really incredibly profound experience, so.
EMILIE: Well, it's funny that you mentioned that I just saw some stand up comedy last weekend in downtown Denver. I saw Sarah Silverman do a stand up. And this has to be one of her early stops on a nationwide tour. Cause it was very rough. But I love watching an artist in progress, you know, in work, in, like, working progress, if that makes sense. Cause live theater and live comedy is so raw and so real.
And she opened first by doing a very funny, like, physical humor bit, but then by saying, by the way, this entire special is going to be about my dying parents. And then she proceeded to give an hour and a half of material on caring for her father at the end of his life. That is literally the subject of her new stand up that she's working on, that, I hope turns into a special on Netflix, which I'm sure it will be eventually. But it was palpable, the discomfort in the audience when she came out with that and just said, by the way, here's what you're in for. And we were all like, oh, god, what is this going to be?
And then she did what comedians do so well, which is take a delicate subject that nobody talks about in society and just make humor out of it. Like, find the funny in what is so dark. And you're right, the irony is, for the majority of our lifetimes, if you have something really tough to talk about, if you have a good relationship with your parents, those are the people you call to talk it out with. And now the tables have completely turned, and you're going through a vulnerable experience for them, but also a really vulnerable experience for yourself, I would imagine. And it's like, besides your therapist, if you're lucky enough to have one, where do you process? And, like, what does that look like?
LIZ: And that was one of the things that came out of the Atlantic article that you referenced back in 2016, which was that it's also a massive identity shift. Like, I mean, you just put it so well. We've had this relationship of parent child, even if, you know, we've also shifted to parent adult child, you know, if we're in a healthy relationship. Right. The dynamic shifts, but you're not only facing their end of life, you're facing a new identity for you, which is to be parentless or to be the adult in the room. I don't know if you remember. There was a song. I think it's from, like, the eighties or something. I'm an adult now, and it's like…
EMILIE: That sounds right.
LIZ: …wait, I'm the net. Like, I'm. I'm where the buck stops me, you know? Yeah. So it's a huge identity shift, too. And so workplaces also would be smart to understand that there's a lot of grief involved in caregiving. I mean, as natural as, you know, end of life is, it's the one thing we all do and all have in common. Right? It's dying. There's grief all along the way. Like, you know, my mom gets a little slower. She gives up driving. She's grieving. She's grieving her abilities, and I'm grieving. I wish you often, as you go through caregiving, if you're honest about it, you get really frustrated with your parents. Oh, my God. Why are you so slow? But it's not really anger, it's sadness that doesn't really have. So you've got a lot of grief in the workplace, too. So just training managers, talking about it, and trying to infuse compassion in the workplace, I think is so, so important.
EMILIE: And what would you say to the woman who's listening right now, who's navigating that, who's like, in the midst of the caregiver creep right now, who's in the midst of the caregiver crisis right now? What can she do to sustain herself in what could be a years long, challenging transition of a journey?
LIZ: Yeah, I would say a number of things. One is to recognize that this is a journey and that it does end sadly. Right. Uh, but it does end. And so I know for me, it totally took my career sideways and not in a good way at first, right. I mean, sort of like a, so what now? What kind of thing? Um, I would say, you know, like, keep the door open, keep your foot on the gas pedal. Unless you're ready to retire and fund your own end of life to 90 or 100, stay in the game. As difficult as it is, if you can stay in the game, so, so important.
But if it, if it's messy and looks like hell for a little while, just let it go. Like, it doesn't. I mean, we really, we truly do, do our most important work outside of the office, right. With our families. It hurts, it sucks, and it's unfair when it impacts our earning, our retirement, you know, all the hard work we put in. But if you can just try to remember that it's a long game, I think that's really important.
One of the tools that I used and that I use with women that I work with is post caregiving planning, which can feel really uncomfortable for women to think about when caregiving ends, because we know what that means. And again, we're not comfortable thinking about that. But I encourage people to think about what are the areas of your life that you want to have in place when caregiving is over. Because sometimes as we go through this, it really does feel like major parts of our life were just crumbling because it is intense. I know. I don't want to minimize, you know, how difficult it can be.
So, for me, for example, I could see my career going sidewards. There were times I thought my marriage was going to end over it because the stress of, you know, just being in it all, you know, and you come from different families and there are different dynamics and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. My health was going south because I was existing on Diet Coke and Twizzlers during the day and then having a glass of savvy bee at night because I was so sugared up. It was super healthy. Um, but, I mean, I was just like, I could grab a Diet Coke and a bag of Twizzlers and throw them in my tote bag and be gone for the whole day.
EMILIE: Well, I can imagine, like, a hospital vending machine being your sustenance for a while.
LIZ: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And something about chewing on those vines was really satisfying, but, yeah, it was disgusting. So, like. So I was like, okay, this is going to end, and I don't want my life to be completely unraveled. So what do I need to do in my job to make sure I keep it? And at that. And I think at that point, keeping it was really my only goal. It wasn't like, getting. It wasn't promotions getting ahead. At that point, it was like, okay, keeping it.
And what do I need to do in my marriage to make sure that that's not over when this is over? You know? And so there were a couple times when the guilt and the feeling of wanting to be, like, at the bedside of the hospice. But you know what? I hadn't been home for a week, and I had to stop and have dinner, with my family, you know, and so. And then I started drinking, you know, adding water. You know, I'm like. It started really simple. I'm like, bring a water bottle, switch out one of the seven Diet Cokes, you know, for a liter of water.
And I started keeping a pair of, we call them sneakers in Boston, trainers, whatever, right in the trunk of my car. And anytime, you know, if I could do a walking meeting with my phone or if somebody I was bedside with fell asleep, I'd, you know, go do a lap or something, even if it was around a parking lot.
So having a post caregiving plan, I think, is really helpful because it makes you realize what you need to maintain. Because when we get into these truly life or death situations and we're looking at this elderly person or the sick person, we're thinking their needs are everything. Our needs are just as important. Like, nowhere should we wait till everything goes south to prioritize ourselves. And so, on the Working Daughter website, we have a Bill of Rights. And one of the things it says is nowhere is it written that the person you're caring for life is more important than your own. And that's the challenge. You're managing two lives at the same time. And if you're a mother, then you might be managing three or more. But why would we let our own lives go to hell? Because we're careful. But we do. We just sort of charge into the problem and we start to think, well, this could be the last Christmas or the last June or the last Saturday. But we also have to make sure our own lives don't fall apart. And that plan also gives us a second lens.
So there were times when I was like, do I get on the plane and go to the headquarters of the company I work for in San Francisco? Or what if she dies this weekend? Or what if there's a crisis this weekend? And having that post caregiving plan gave me sort of a second set of criteria through which to make decisions that felt really difficult in the moment. You know what? Well, you've been here and you feel really good about how you've shown up for your mother. And you did say you wanna have a job afterwards. So you do take this trip, or that trip is stupid, and I'm not going on it and I'm staying. You know? But there's no right answer. But it gave you a second set of lens. So I would say, think about that.
EMILIE: I think it's so hard for us, especially as women and especially as people who pride themselves on being good caregivers, to have any semblance of putting ourselves on the to do list, on the priority list at that time. But the irony that I can't help but think about here is that your dying parent would not want you to give up your entire livelihood for this. Right? Your elderly parent does not want to see your life go to complete s*** as they make their exit from this world. And so it's kind of like you have to parent yourself in that moment.
LIZ: Yeah, that's a really good way to put it. Yeah. I mean, think about, you have these children, you have all these hopes and desires for them. You would sacrifice so many things for them. And then because the dynamic starts to change, end of life. And this person, like I said, is vulnerable, you just sort of lose sort of sight of that or sense of that. I think the other thing that I'm starting to understand more that I, like, I'm just starting to grasp because, you know, I talk to a working daughter at least once a day, sometimes more, is that. And I don't have any science on this, but I think as we age, especially, like, around 80, things start to shift for our parents as our worlds get smaller.
Our parents who might have been like Emilie, move across the country. Go skydiving, try this, do that. Take the promotion. I want everything for you. You don't get that sense from them as much because their worlds are just shrinking. Their abilities are shrinking. You know, how much they get out, how much media they consume, all that kind of stuff is shrinking. And so we don't hear that kind of encouragement from our parents. And their needs are kind of the first things coming out of their mouth. I'm overly generalizing here. So as adult daughters and sons, we're like, I don't know that they do feel that way. I don't know that they would want that, but they would. They're just in a different phase.
EMILIE: Well, they're vulnerable.
LIZ: They're vulnerable, and they're just, their worlds are shrinking, so they're not. And you become their safety net. And that's so talking about policies and what should happen. I mean, the challenge is that we as a society are scrambling to figure out how you support someone for 100 years.
EMILIE: We weren't designed for that.
LIZ: We're not designed for that. We haven't figured that out yet. And so the daughter and the son sometimes, but the adult child becomes everything. The medical, the transportation, the activities of daily living, the housing and the social. And so one thing I would say also to that woman who might be going through it now, is the reason that you feel like you're failing, the reason that you feel like it's impossible, it's because I did some math, and it is. So you're probably familiar. You're familiar with the, US Census Bureau puts out the American Time Use Survey.
EMILIE: Yeah.
LIZ: And it basically documents, like, how much the average woman between the ages of, like, 18 and 25 spends on showering and commuting and eating. And you know how much the average man who's 42 and married. Great. It breaks down how much time all these different demographics spend on everything.
So I added up woman in the sandwich generation. So a woman who has someone under the age of 18 and over 65, all of the tasks she might do in a day, 25.6 hours a day. And that's why these women feel like they're failing. And maybe if we went to bed at night instead of lying there at 3:00 a.m. when we all wake up, for some reason going, oh, my god, I didn't do this. And I'm failing at that. Imagine if we were like, man, I'm amazing. I'm amazing.
EMILIE: Right. And it's unpaid, it's unacknowledged. It's unaccounted for in so many ways. And it's a huge percentage of our society that goes around, that revolves around this unpaid labor force. Right? That's unacknowledged and frankly, set up to fail. There's a report from the Department of Labor's women's bureau that says on any given day, almost one in four women ages 55 or older provide some sort of unpaid caregiving. These caregivers spend on average more than 2 hours a day engaged in this caregiving. Given the 52 million women aged 55 or older in the US, this translates into 26.6 million hours of unpaid care daily.
And that does account for both caregiving for young children and adult caregiving. But it's kind of amazing how like, adult caregiving can look so different for so many women, like family members with disabilities, living with chronic illnesses. To your point, the fact that we're all living longer.
LIZ: Spouses. Right?
EMILIE: Spouses, yeah. And it's just, it is such a vast percentage of our population that goes feeling alone and invisible.
LIZ: So you started out and I don't think I. Because I talk too much, but I never got to, you know, like, how can we hack the system? I think the most important thing is like, why are we surprised by this anymore? We shouldn't be surprised by this anymore. And I would say to, you know, the women listening to this, it's probably inevitable, you know, it's a 90% chance that this is going to happen to you.
So what can you do now to get ready for that? And so I think, you know, keeping our own homes in order. Figuratively, of course, right? Like making sure at work we're doing the best we can, that we're organized at work, you know, that we're earning when we can earn kind of thing, and then knowing like, what our support systems are around, if we have kids, our kids, you know, so if there's an emergency, do you know who picks the kid up at school? Is the paperwork filed so they can get them? Do you have a pet? And do you know, like, who's going to take the pet? Like, all that kind of stuff, right.
And then knowing as best we can. And every parent and family dynamic is different. But I. Have you talked to your parents? You know, do you know who their healthcare proxy is? Do you know what their power of attorney is? I can send you, I have a, I call it the Caregiving 101. It's a PDF, if it would be valuable to link to. And it takes people through financial, medical and housing.
So, like, here are the things to think about as far as senior living. Here are the things to think about as far as medical paperwork. And then here are the things to think about financially. So that might be helpful to link to. And not every parent is going to walk through that with you and be forthcoming. But if you start thinking about that, knowing that this is coming, people age, it falls to daughters. So get as organized as you can now.
EMILIE: I love it. I think that's all very sound advice, honestly. I'm on your workingdaughter.com website right now looking at the Bill of Rights, which is amazing. You have so many resources here that I think are designed exactly to answer these questions. So tell us where my listeners can learn more about you. Keep up with your work. Take advantage of the great community that you've built around this because it is so impressive and so important, the work that you're doing.
LIZ: Thank you. Thank you. So workingdaughter.com is where everything is housed and lived. So you can find anything from there. But just to highlight. Yeah. So we do have a lot of articles, resources, I think we recently published, you know, step by step guide to cleaning out junk. Right. Because that's a huge topic that comes up or, like, what to take to the hospital, like all that kind of, you know, stuff. Right. How to start having the conversations about assisted living. So lots of articles like that on the site.
Then we have our Facebook community, which is a private community. And that's where the real magic happens. You know, there's close to 10,000 people in there, mostly women, a few good men. We call them our working dudes. And that's where people just feel less alone. They can talk to other people who understand what they're going through. They can vent and say, I don't want any opinions here. I just want to tell you I'm losing my mind. And, you know, everyone can jump in, or they can say, what's the best adult underwear that doesn't leak overnight? I mean, anything you might want to talk about, right? So that's where a lot of magic happens is our Facebook community.
We have and all linked from workingdaughter.com, we have an Amazon store where anytime a working daughter recommends products, we curate it into the store so that it takes the guesswork out of, like, what is the best Rollator? I didn't even know what a Rollator was like. You know, like, I can't get them to drink, boost what, you know, is there another product that you recommend? That kind of stuff. What else do we have?
Then we have a service called, Hey, Sis. And so you can, like, basically buy an hour to call me and say, like, I don't know what to do about x. Or you can buy a package of hours. Some people use those hours to talk through situations like, why won't my sister help me? Or, you know, whatever. Why won't my father stop driving? Or whatever? And some people say, hey, can I buy that hour and then send you off to do something? So, like, recently I helped a woman who has a really high powered financial services job in New York City get through to the VA in her father's state because she couldn't get through the phone system, and I spent her hour doing that. So, it's kind of like you need a big sister who's been through this. We do that. And then there's the book, of course, so.
EMILIE: That's right. Of course. Working Daughter: A Guide To Caring For Your Aging Parents While Making A Living. Such an excellent resource, and one that we all pretend like we don't want to have to think about someday, but it's good to know it's there because it's coming for us all. Right?
LIZ: There's research that shows that women who go through caregiving feeling like it's a choice. Back to agency you were talking about have a much better experience than those of us who feel like, I couldn't do anything about this. And I believe that we should frame it as a choice. You know, would I choose for both my parents to get sick at the same time? No. Would I choose, you know, my mom to have cancer? No. Would I choose for this to happen? Right when my first book came out? None of that. I wouldn't choose any of that.
But I chose to show up for them. Right. You're choosing to show up. And I think if you take that sort of point of view, that agency, as you were saying, it's a much more powerful experience because, like I said, no one else is going to give you a pat on the back.
EMILIE: Absolutely.
LIZ: Working daughters, if they had the energy, they should be doing cartwheels all the way to bed every night. Like, I'm amazing. I'm amazing.
EMILIE: Exactly. I love that. And if nowhere else, we can get that from your community. So I think that's so important. Thank you so much for being here, Liz. I've really enjoyed this.
LIZ: Thank you for talking about it.
EMILIE: For links to all the great resources Liz just shared with us, head to bossedup.org/episode468. That's bossedup.org/episode468. And there you'll also find a really handy dandy blog post version of our conversation, as well as a full transcript.
Now, I want to hear from you. How has the role of caregiving for the elderly, or for your parents, or for aging loved ones in your life impacted your career? Is this something you see coming on the horizon? Something you want to start thinking about now?
[OUTRO MUSIC IN]
What questions or concerns do you have? As always, let's keep the conversation going after the episode in the Bossed Up Courage Community on Facebook, or in the Bossed Up LinkedIn Group. And until next time, let's keep bossin’ in pursuit of our purpose and together, let's lift as we climb.
[OUTRO MUSIC ENDS]
