Post #3

Carework is a subject that hits close to home.

My mother cares for my grandmother, and has for the past few years. It has been a sticky situation at times, and my mother has had to take a lot of time off work mostly for my grandmother with her doctor’s appointments. She also has taken weeks off at a time when my grandmother has been hospitalized. It is a stressful situation for my mom because her other siblings live far away, so she pretty much does it all on her own. My mother, luckily, works for an amazing company that has been very flexible with her needs to care for her mother.

When I was younger, my mother was the parent who drove me and my sister to workout for gymnastics, and every single one of our competitions. She would come to almost every volleyball game and softball game, and she was always there for other school functions. If my sister or I had an appointment with the doctor or dentist, she was the one to take us. She cooked and cleaned and did everything for us. Now that both my sister and I live here in Arizona, she only really physically needs to care for my grandmother.

I think that my mom was always pretty stressed out with everything she had to do. Seeing as she is the parent who has worked full time my whole time, I can understand the stress she endured with everything.

With so many women in the workforce now, it is easy to see the added stress on women, and the stigma associated with men who engage in carework.

Over the summer when I was interning in Washington, DC there was a man who would come into work right at starting time, and left as soon as her was able to. I came to find that the reason he was always quick to leave was that his wife had cancer, and he was the one caring for her. However, the employer would not let him take off time from work to care for his wife, forcing him to deplete his vacation time. My boss had two children, one with special needs, and he was divorced. It was very hard for him to care for his children 100% because of the inflexibility of the employer. He would have to have family take care of the kids because he was a single father and had already received all of his vacation days.

I think the problem that is being faced now is that society has changed in regards to carework and who performs it. Women are no longer the only stay-at-home caregivers. Men have come to be caregivers as well. Another problem is that employers are refusing to be flexible for people who need to care for family members, no matter their sex, making it near impossible sometimes.

The biggest problem is the social construction of gender, and what jobs women and men are supposed to perform. If society continues to adhere to the idea that women are supposed to be the primary caregivers for the world, when a family structure works against the “norm” it is seen as wrong.