Elder Care as Essential Labor

Essential Labor and the Way Our Society Undervalues Non-Monetized Care Tasks

Last week I really wanted to write. But I was drawn into a vortex of “care tasks” for my parents. A part felt of me guilty: “I just started this project, and now here’s a delay.”

The wiser part thought: this is EXACTLY why we need to reduce the traditional work week expectations, and why I launched 30 is the new 40 in the first place! While I won’t pretend that normalizing a slightly shorter workweek will solve all the problems, it would certainly allow me to take my 4-day elder care trips with less guilt.

Right now I happen to be self-employed. Honesty, that’s not fully sustainable right now. I’ve managed to maintain our household (where my husband works full time, full disclosure) by taking distributions from my retirement account for a couple of years now.

Angela Garbes writes about these responsibilities eloquently in her book, Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change. And while I am not a mother to human children (rather four-footed furry ones), caring for elders is a “motherly” occupation.

I think through the support my mother needs as she persists in living at home, though my Dad has needed the support of nursing care given his mobility challenges and Parkinson’s balance issues. I make arrangements, phone calls, and give rides to pool therapy appointments. I consult with my sister (a nurse practitioner) as we figure out how to ask Dad’s primary care provider for what he needs.

All of these types of tasks involve complex decisions that can be taxing to our executive function. Initially when I started exploring a shorter work week it was because, as a person with ADHD, I just can’t “turn it off” when I come home from work.

The neurospicy quality means 30 hours at the office probably ends up being 40 hours worked, if we count the time we spend thinking and ruminating. But I don’t care to show up and do a “butt in seat” job for all that time.

A.I.’s conception of what “neurospicy” looks like…

I think better when I move, it turns out. When I’m on a walk, or in the shower, I get my most brilliant ideas. Now, I know it would be extremely wasteful to be in a shower for 6+ hours a day…

Why don’t we consider it wasteful when we ask people to put their bodies into chairs for 6+ hours a day? It’s actually not good for us, and it has detrimental effects on our bodies.

We need to change it up probably every 90-120 minute anyway to honor our ultradian cycles. Nature and our bodies ask us to take care of ourselves, but we learn in Western culture to ignore those signals, to grind on, even when we are too tired.

It’s no wonder we feel tired/wired and yet cannot receive deep and restorative rest. Combine a tendency to be tethered to our phones 24x7 and it’s a recipe for burnout.

I’m just not willing to work in those conditions anymore. I’d love to take a job that allows me to show up 2-4 days a week to give structure to my time. But also allows for the ebbs and flows of real life rather than the pre-defined PTO (paid time off) that assumes we have a full time spouse at home.

Most of us don’t have that. And if we did grow up with that, we may have realized how disempowering it felt to the spouse not officially earning an income. (She earned it spiritually, if not monetarily.)

Until that time, I persist at self-employment, and at calling for a norm that works for more people. Thanks for being here. Thanks for supporting the notion that shorter workweeks are better for everyone. ❤️

I’d love to hear what you spent your non-working hours on this week/month, that felt valuable and nourishing, even if it was hard or required you to do less “paid work.”