Our world continues to rapidly change, with 10,000 people turning 65 every day in the United States. The caregiving workforce is continuing to grow.
Businesses are examining policies and corporate cultures to create environments where caregivers can thrive. Working daughters, like working motheres, need flexibility, paid family leave and expanded eligibility requirements.
They need affordable, quality eldercare options, too.
There are approximately 23 million women who balance caring for an aging parent with going to work, and often raising children of their own.
These women themselves often can miss the fact they are caregivers; they just consider themselves “dutiful daughters.” Yet they average 24.4 hours of unpaid care a week, from buying groceries, to managing medication, helping with household chores, assisting their parents with bathing and dressing, and driving to appointments.
Many are even providing complex medical tasks, with little or no training, such as administering injections, monitoring vital signs, caring for wounds or cleaning feeding tubes.
Collectively, they provide $470 billion in unpaid care, according to the American Association of Retired People (AARP).
And this care is at the additional cost to their careers.
Working daughters, like working mothers, might need to switch to a less-demanding job, take time off or quit work altogether. They lose wages and job-related benefits costing them, on average, $304,000 in lost wages and benefits while spending nearly 20 percent of their own income on caregiving.
Forward-thinking businesses are already working making the care they give compatible with their careers.
