<p>Each day, more than 10,000 people turn 65, which prompts conversation on a topic that comes up much less frequently in the workplace: Elder care and caring for aging parents. In this episode of Honest HR, host Wendy Fong speaks with Liz O’Donnell on navigating work and while also providing important end of life care to parents, and approaches employers can take to support their employees with caregiving responsibilities.<br /><br />Liz O'Donnell is the author of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Working-Daughter-Parents-Making-Living/dp/1538124653/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2XCS71PUJ5ZAN&keywords=A+Guide+to+Caring+for+Aging+Parents+While+Making+a+Living&qid=1643745875&sprefix=a+guide+to+caring+for+aging+parents+while+making+a+living%2Caps%2C74&sr=8-1"><em>Working Daughter: A Guide to Caring for Your Aging Parents</em></a><em>.<br /><br /></em>Honest HR is supported by <a href="https://www.hireguide.com/shrm">Hireguide</a>.</p>
Each day, more than 10,000 people turn 65, which prompts conversation on a topic that comes up much less frequently in the workplace: Elder care and caring for aging parents. In this episode of Honest HR, host Wendy Fong speaks with Liz O’Donnell on navigating work and while also providing important end of life care to parents, and approaches employers can take to support their employees with caregiving responsibilities.
Liz O'Donnell is the author of Working Daughter: A Guide to Caring for Your Aging Parents.
Honest HR is supported by Hireguide.
Speaker 1:
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Gloria Sinclair Miller:
Welcome to Honest HR, the podcast for all of us HR professionals, people managers, and team leads intent on growing and developing our companies for the better.
Amber Clayton:
We bring you honest, forward-thinking conversations and relatable stories from the workplace that challenge the way it's always been done because after all, you have to push back to move forward.
Wendy Fong:
Honest HR is a podcast from SHRM, the Society for Human Resource Management, and by listening, you're helping create better workplaces and a better world. I'm Wendy Fong.
Amber Clayton:
I'm Amber Clayton.
Gloria Sinclair Miller:
I am Gloria Sinclair Miller. Now, let's get honest.
Amber Clayton:
Now, let's get honest.
Wendy Fong:
Now, let's get honest.
Hello, everyone, and welcome back listeners, and welcome to anyone who is listening for the very first time. I'm your host, Wendy Fong, manager virtual event innovation at SHRM. Today, I'm excited to introduce our guest. Liz O'Donnell is the founder of Working Daughter, a community for women balancing elder care, career and more, a former family caregiver four times over, longtime marketing executive, and working mother. She is a recognized expert on working while caregiving and has written on the topic for outlets including The Atlantic and Time, and appeared on shows including WNYC, Good Day Sacramento, as well as on countless podcasts. She also spoke at SHRM's inclusion conference in 2020.
Liz was enjoying a fast-paced career and raising two children when both of her parents were diagnosed with terminal illness on the same day. From the challenges she faced and the lessons she learned, she wrote Working Daughter: A Guide to Caring for Your Aging Parents While Making a Living so that no other caregiver would feel alone as they navigated care and career. Liz also wrote Mogul, Mom & Maid: The Balancing Act of the Modern Woman, and she lives in Boston. Welcome to Honest HR, Liz.
Liz O'Donnell:
Thanks so much. I appreciate your attention to this topic.
Wendy Fong:
Oh, yeah, absolutely. So can you define for our listeners what is a working daughter?
Liz O'Donnell:
Sure. A working daughter is anyone who is balancing elder care and career. The idea, actually, of the term came to me almost like a light bulb over the head, like in a cartoon. Years ago when I was promoting Mogul, Mom & Maid, I had just had this crazy day that started at 5:36 in the morning, got up, got the kids out the door, answered emails, took a vacation day so I could take my mom to the doctor. She was running late. We had to move the doctor's appointment. Then we had to go get new prescriptions, take her out to lunch, fix my dad's computer, hop in the car, drive home, got a stick stuck under. I mean, it was just a day, and ended with me giving a speech to a bunch of new mothers about my book Mogul, Mom & Maid, which is all about how housework and chores impact women's careers.
I'm driving home, and I'm so exhausted from the day I had had with my parents earlier that day that this idea, and it was about 11:00 at night, just hit me like, "You know what? So many people are focused on working mothers, but what about the working daughters?" So that's how the term came to me. So it's really designed to be a parallel to working mothers.
Wendy Fong:
Yeah, especially during this pandemic. I've seen a lot of research and articles on working mothers, and me being a single mother myself, I absolutely feel the pressure of managing homeschool and working at home. Can you talk about what the differences are from working daughterhood from working motherhood?
Liz O'Donnell:
Sure. Yeah, and it's been really frustrating to me that so much of the media focus around the she session and how many women are leaving the workforce through the pandemic have been focused on motherhood, but it is exactly what you said. It's because the source data is tracking mothers and the impact of the pandemic on their careers. It's not necessarily tracking elder care. So when you don't have the data, then you don't have the reports. So anyway, my little side frustration because my estimates are that there are about 23 million of us working, well, I'm not anymore, but working daughters, so women who are balancing elder care and career, and that's about the number I see for working mothers. So you've got the same dataset, size of women who are impacted.
So there are a lot of similarities, and also some working daughters are also working mother. They're the sandwich generation that we hear about. So a lot of similarities, but where the differences really lie are that motherhood, assuming that you have a healthy child, of course that's a big assumption, is somewhat predictable in the sense of you know when you have a baby that in four to five years they'll go to preschool and kindergarten and that that's a half day program, and then it becomes a full day program, and the kid's going to get out of school at 3:00. You pretty much know at three months, six months, nine months, one year, two years when they have their well checks and that sort of thing.
So you can plan your own life in accordance when they have school vacation and all that good stuff. With elder care, you never know. You never know when someday you might get the phone call that your parents are taken in an ambulance, that there was a fall, God forbid. So it's completely unpredictable. So there's that piece. That's a big difference.
Another piece that's so different is also with childcare, assuming, you have the means, you can outsource some childcare. I could drop my son off at daycare and he might scream for a few minutes on the way in the door, but he really couldn't say to me, "I'm not going to the daycare, mom. I'm taking care of myself." You can't do that with an adult. They have autonomy and they have rights. So you can't just say, "Mom, I want to put you in this adult day health program because I'm not finding enough time to focus on work." You're dealing with adults who should be allowed to have a say in their lives, and it's also so personal. Elder care and caregiving is such personal tasks that you just can't outsource that for an adult.
Then the other part is that, again, assuming a healthy child, assuming you plan to be a parent, there's a lot of joy. I mean, there's a lot of stress, don't get me wrong, but there's a lot of joy in parenting, and it's all about possibility and what life this child will grow into and what life you're providing for them.
With elder care, you're facing end of life. So there's a lot of grief that you don't actually necessarily know is grief yet that comes along with the fact that you're facing your parents' end of life and, therefore, you're also facing a big role shift in your own life as well. So those would be the major differences I would say.
Wendy Fong:
Yeah. It seems like our society is set up to have these structures in place for parenting, like you said, right? There's the pickup, the drop off, the summer breaks, you know what to expect, and there's public schools where you can drop them off and you don't have to worry, enroll them in kindergarten, and they go through the motions, but there's no same system for elder care. There's no support system at all.
Liz O'Donnell:
The other thing that's happened that we're still really grappling with, so we know that the baby boomers are aging and they were one of the largest, if not the largest, maybe millennials are bigger, but a huge generation size-wise, and so they're aging and you've got 10,000 people turning 65 every day, and people are living longer due to science, which is great, but at the same time, the longer you live, the more likely you are to develop a chronic illness.
So maybe my parents didn't engage in caregiving, elder care the way I did because my grandparents died from heart disease, but it was fast. Whereas, both my parents had some heart disease, but due to science, they were able to live longer, better lives with them, but it also meant longer time caregiving.
We haven't even, I think, come up for air and put these programs in place, and that's another thing that weighs on working daughters and sons is as your parent ages and we don't have those structures in place that you just brought up, it all falls on the adult child, the medical needs, the housing needs, the financial needs, the social needs. It all comes down to you, the individual. It shouldn't be that way.
Wendy Fong:
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. It is almost this new challenge that's coming into light, as you mentioned, because technology and science have these wonderful ways of helping people live longer, but also, it creates this new reality that we're facing of having to care for our parents. I think I read a statistic. So I read your book, by the way. It's amazing.
Liz O'Donnell:
Oh, thank you.
Wendy Fong:
Because also, I'm in that sandwich generation where I do have to caregive for my mother as well. So when I was reading the statistic where you have to take care of your parents, like for my mother, for example, I have to deal with bathing. She wears adult diapers longer than you have to with your child. My daughter's potty trained by she's two or three years old, but I have to take care of my parents in a different capacity for maybe 15, 20 years. Who knows?
Liz O'Donnell:
Yeah. It's much more intimate care, too.
Wendy Fong:
It is. It is much more intimate care. You can't just, for a child, I could find another mom, maybe drop her off her house for the afternoon, go run some errands, go pick them up, but with my mother, I have to be there 24/7, making sure she's safe. She actually has a neurodegenerative disease called ataxia, and it's a rare condition similar to MS, where she's not very mobile.
So I have to help with transporting, bathing, brushing her teeth, those basic necessities. It's just crazy how it just all happens so fast. Sometimes these things can just happen so fast and you have to just react and just be there because who else will be there? Fortunately, there's four of us, there's four siblings. So we're able to tag team a little bit, but sometimes not all siblings are always there to help out. So talk a little bit about your experience. I know you had two sisters and that whole dynamic of how do you decide who's going to help out and who's going to do what.
Liz O'Donnell:
Yeah. There's a saying in the caregiving world that there's always one, that there's always one caregiver that most of the responsibility falls to. I never thought I would be the one. Typically, it's the oldest or sometimes if there's a sibling who isn't married or doesn't have children. I'm the youngest of three daughters. So I spent a lot of time complaining that it wasn't supposed to be me, but I think oftentimes and I think if caregivers can think about this too if they are the one, they might be the one because they have the skillset to be the one.
So we can look at it like a burden, which I certainly spent a lot of time whining and complaining about it. I will not going to let you read the book, but I also at one point shifted to looking at it like, "Well, there's a reason I'm the one because I'm excellent with logistics. I'm a fierce advocate when it comes to dealing with the medical industry and doctors and that sort of thing, and I don't know that I could have lived my life any other way, but then to show up in what I often called warrior mode when my parents really needed me."
My sisters, if they had written the book first, we would all paint a different picture because they were absolutely involved and felt they were involved probably at the same level that I was involved. From my point of view, it didn't feel that way, and part of it is because I am so fierce sometimes and so type A and take charge that I steamroll them to a degree.
There's a term in parental care about they call it maternal gatekeeping, and you know you often hear a woman complaining that her male spouse isn't doing as much, and what you actually find out, not all the time, but sometimes is that she hasn't really provided the space for that person to share the responsibilities like, "Yeah, you took the kid out to play in the snow here in Boston, but you forgot to put a snow pants on," or "Yeah, you folded the laundry, but you didn't fold the laundry the right way." So it's this concept where we don't make space for other people sometimes, and that was certainly my experience.
I was like, "This is how it's going to get done. This is my timeline. Keep up with me or get lost," and then at some point I realized my sibling were losing their parents and I had to make space for them to also be involved. So it's a balancing act, always a balancing act.
Wendy Fong:
Well, I could definitely resonate with that because I think I have a similar personality. Well, props to you, firstly, for your fierceness. I think it takes a lot, but I think our parents appreciate that too. They're able to just take lead. Because we don't have those social support systems, that personality I'm sure got you through hardest times through the caregiving.
Liz O'Donnell:
Well, and quite frankly, it was easier for me to focus on logistics than my feelings. It was like it's so much easier for me to wake up every morning, look at that spreadsheet. I'm like, "Okay. Here's what needs to get done today," than to actually sit with my parents are facing end of life. This is really sad. I talk about in the book how my sister lived out of state, is a talker, and much more of a touchy feely type.
So I would say I am so busy dealing with logistics and that's how I wanted to be focused. So you call them and talk to them every day. That's not who I am. I'm not the call my mother every day kind of person and then feedback the information to me. So it's partially playing to your strengths as well.
Wendy Fong:
Yeah, and it sounds like you're able to delegate as well like, "Okay. That's not my thing." You're able to delegate it to your other siblings, which is good. So you're able to tag team and allowing yourself the space to delegate because I know for me sometimes I can be controlling because in a chaotic situation, you want to control things so you feel a sense of safety, that you have this under control, and you can handle it, but you can also get burnt out.
So that's when you have to learn to delegate and, "Okay. Who do I need to partner up with to help out?" I know your husband was a big part in helping with the kids during this hard time for you as well. Can you talk more about how he helped you out through the process, and also the challenges and the strain it put on your relationship?
Liz O'Donnell:
Yeah. It really definitely strained us at times. My husband and I had agreed well before we got married when we were dating that if we ever did have children, I loved working and he was never really that into work, so we always said, "If we do have children, he would stay home with them." So he was a stay-at-home dad. So I had some setup that was specially helpful in being a working daughter that a lot of working daughters don't have.
So when there was a crisis, I was able to drop everything and run out the door and leave my kids who I think when my parents were diagnosed, I think my kids were middle school and elementary. Not everybody has that luxury. I remember actually once I was at my mom's hospice and my mom was in a hospice home for about three months, which is long for hospice, and there was another woman in the next room, and you could hear snippets of conversation, and I would sometimes hear her daughter, but we were both so focused on being at hospice with our moms. We didn't really ever stop to talk.
Then one day, I overheard her on the phone trying to parent her child who sounded about the same age as mine, and she was really stressed out. Her kid needed her. I went out in the hall and I talked to her afterwards, and she was flying up from Florida. She got the call that her mom was near the end. My mom was only one town over, and I felt so pulled being at hospice versus being with my kids. She got the call, come up from Florida, leave your kids, and then her mom ended up living another month, and she was like, "Do I go home? Do I stay?" So it could be really, really challenging.
So I was lucky in that my husband was a full-time dad because I could just run out the door. I could choose to sleep at hospice, which I did in the last weeks every other night. My sister and I took turn. The downside was that I couldn't lose my job. I think I was the healthcare and the mortgage payment, and there were times it was so hard I would've quit if I could. I had had to keep showing up for work, and that was brutal, but having somebody to just know that my kids were okay was great.
Then I think the other potential downside was I wouldn't say I took advantage of that. What else was I going to do? I didn't ever stop to talk to my husband about what was happening. I just made the assumption that, "My parents need me, there's a crisis, I'm out the door, and you've got everything here." I was so wrapped up in what was happening to them and to me that I never really stopped to ask him, "Hey, are you okay with this? How are things at home?" I just assumed that's what you do. You pick up the slack.
So the strain started to show up in our marriage and just in his words. His actions were always right. He moved my parents. He rented the U-Haul and moved them. He moved my mom into assisted living, and then three weeks later we decided to transfer to a hospice home and he got another U-Haul, and three weeks later he was back moving her heavy maple furniture that she got in the '60s and '70s and loading it up again.
He always did the right thing, but sometimes he would give me grief about what he was doing. So after my mom passed away and my dad lived for a few more years and then as dementia kicked in, this time I actually learned something and I said, "Look, my dad's clearly declining. He means so much to me. I want to be at his side through this. This is what I would like to do and this is what I want you to understand about my relationship with him," and he just said, "Thanks for taking the time to ask me. I've got your back." What a big difference it made when I actually stopped and made him a partner as opposed to just took off and did my own thing.
Wendy Fong:
Yeah. Well, I'm sure it sounds very challenging when you're more reacting and having to take care of your parents. I mean, I can't even imagine what you went through having to deal with both parents being diagnosed on the same day and just having to go just take action and just respond and not even having time or space to check in with yourself, let alone check in with your partner or anyone else. You just have to do and get done what needs to get done.
Liz O'Donnell:
That's another difference too back to your earlier question about working mothers versus working daughters is, again, oftentimes, especially if we're working women, we think about having children and you never completely plan for these things, but we try to plan, "Okay. At what point in my career does it make sense? At what point in my marriage does it make sense? At what point in my age does it make sense for me to have a child?" Then when you get pregnant, you know you've got nine to 10 months to prepare, right? You know that whatever your workplace maternity leave policy is, I don't think anybody ever completely sticks to their maternity plan, but you have a sense of, "I'm going to take eight weeks," or 12 weeks or 16 weeks, right?
So you have some sense of, "Okay. What is this going to mean for my income, for my job, for my relationships? What space do I need to make physical and mental in my home for a crib?" You don't have any of that with elder care. So one day you wake up and you're like, "Oh, my God. Why am I so stressed out?" because you didn't make any space in your life for this new role.
Wendy Fong:
Yeah. It just lands on your lap and you have to deal with it. You can't even financially plan, right? You save for retirement, but who knows how long we're going to live? Who knows what the medical costs will be or what resources you'll need? For my mom, we had to put bars everywhere, get wheelchairs, buy all those supplies, and we were just not prepared. Sometimes you don't even know where to start like, "Where do I start? How do I start researching this?"
When I read some of the statistics that you wrote in your book, it's astounding. So American businesses lose as much as $34 billion a year to employees' caregiving responsibilities. 10,000 people turn 65 every day in the United States, you mentioned, and we are facing a shortage of caregivers. By 2030, we'll need between 5.7 and 6.6 million caregivers to support the sick and aging.
Liz O'Donnell:
That last statistic was pre-COVID. I would expect that that's going to be exacerbated by COVID. Paid caregivers are historically so underpaid. Oftentimes, domestic workers don't have workplace benefits and protections like maybe an office worker would. Immigration impacts how many paid caregivers we have and, of course, the number of people who are going to need care, and then COVID. What a terrifying industry to work in this past year for paid caregivers. So yeah, we're really facing a huge, huge challenge.
Then on the family side, you have oftentimes people are having fewer children. So not everybody has three other siblings or two other siblings like me to help them with the care. You get distributed families. So we're not all living down the street from the people that might need our care, and you've got divorce as a big factor. So some people are caregiving their mom, their dad, their mother-in-law, their father-in-law, stepmother multiple times over.
Wendy Fong:
Yeah. That's going to be interesting as we get through COVID and seeing the new challenges that come with the caregiving shortage. I mean, there aren't enough resources for the training. As we're trying to find a caregiver for my mom, someone might cancel the night before, and we're scrambling to find someone to fill the place in the morning. We work with different agencies, and it's not cheap. It's definitely not an expense we expected. We're just going through my mom's retirement very quickly and it's a little scary to try to be prepared.
We thought about, "Okay. Should we move her to a nursing home?" but even that can be very costly like thousands of dollars per month. So there are so many factors to consider moving to a nursing home versus staying at home and trying to be comfortable at home, but is that the best environment? Is that the safest for my parents. There are a lot of different factors to consider.
Liz O'Donnell:
Yeah. I think sometimes people get to this point in their life and they're surprised that so much of it is private pay. That's a big shock for a lot of people. I mean, one, we just don't think about elder care necessarily. Again, like my generation, my parents didn't have to provide as much elder care only because their parents just didn't live as long.
So it wasn't something that I saw or thought about growing up, and who wants to think about it? Then you get to the point where you're making these decisions. With my dad, he was in assisted living, and that's expensive, but then as his dementia increased, it was move him to memory care, which is another thousand dollars on top of the assisted living rent or bring in private nursing at the tune of $25 an hour or find a nursing home, some covered by Medicare, some private pay.
I see this a lot of times. Working Daughter has a big community, several thousand women who lean on each other and ask for advice, and they're often shocked like, "Wait, wait, what? This is all out of pocket? You're kidding." You just you don't know. Like you said, there are public schools that we send our children to, but there isn't public elder care resources.
Wendy Fong:
Some of the tasks are very specialized where you need special training like giving injections, doing tube feeding. You need the trained specialist like RN nurse doing catheters to be able to support your parents.
Liz O'Donnell:
Yeah, and that's another big part of elder care that I don't think people realize is that when there are things like injections that are required or tubes, feeding tubes, whatever, wound care, that sort of thing, you can't necessarily hire home health aids because the law requires that you hire a nurse. Yet every day, elderly parents are discharged requiring that care to daughters and sons and spouses. So family caregivers are actually doing medical tasks too with no training.
Wendy Fong:
Yeah, exactly. I find myself in that situation, and I have to take my mom to see the doctor and just being able to keep track of all of her records and make sure that everything is kept straight, that all the medications are in order, she's on the right schedule because she's not able to organize or manage that herself too. So I can't have a caregiver take her to the doctor because I need to be there to be able to ask the doctor these questions and make sure different medications don't have side effects or won't-
Liz O'Donnell:
Interact?
Wendy Fong:
Yeah, exactly. So there's a lot to manage, and we're also working, especially in your experience, you're this sole breadwinner and we have other families and our own kids to take care of.
Liz O'Donnell:
Yeah, and that's why back to the other statistic you mentioned, though, is that the 34 billion that hits companies, it's absenteeism, of course, people taking time off from work to care, but also presenteeism, right? I'm at work, but I'm not at work. I'm thinking about the injection I have to give or I'm thinking about hospice and what that means or my mind is other places. I'm playing phone tag with insurance and doctors because inevitably I call them when it's convenient to my work schedule. Inevitably, they call me back when I'm on a client call or in the Zoom, I mean, always. You're always missing that call.
So many caregivers, especially women, report having to either cut back at work, change to a job with less responsibility, take a leave of absence usually unpaid, and cobble together these options to make time for parent and care, and that's where it's impacting businesses, and then also healthcare costs because family caregivers inherently are ... You're probably talking to a doctor a million times a week, but how often is it actually for you? Right? How often are we putting off our own regularly scheduled medical maintenance, as I like to call it, because we're so busy taking somebody else to the doctor all the time? So then that catches up with businesses as well from a health insurance cost. It's surprising that businesses aren't jumping on this. It's coming as a big, big business impact.
Wendy Fong:
I think so and because, like you mentioned before, media hasn't really covered this issue. Why do you think that is? Why is there so much focus on working mothers but we don't see that for working daughters or sons?
Liz O'Donnell:
I think there's a few things. I think part of it is work. I think working daughters or working mothers, we're 10, 15 years ago in the workplace. 10, 15 years ago in the workplace, working mothers were still fighting and trying to figure out how to make it work. All of a sudden, they discovered they can have it all. Well, what does that look like and how does that work? So we've come a long way in a short time. I mean, there's still a lot to do to support working mothers at work. Don't get me wrong. I mean, we're still one of the only countries that doesn't have paid maternity leave, right? So I'm not saying it's perfect by any means, but we've come a long way in recognizing the challenges and the support required for working mothers.
We actually have started to finally have a dialogue about working parents, right? So we're not making it all female-based. We're just at that starting point, I would say, with elder care. I mean, even in 2015 when I started working daughter.com and I started writing the book, there were very few people talking about elder care with respect to work. Now, there's so many more people talking about it. It's still not enough, and it does really frustrate me that these articles and even workplace policies, they treat it like a parenthetical. They're like, "Well, I mentioned and elder care, the she session and the challenges of working mothers," and there's always comma, "and people caring for ..." We're more than a parenthetical. We have so much more.
So I think, one, it's just a matter of time. We're behind the curve. I think, two, it's much more invisible. I mean, you think about your coworker who is going out on leave. Well, first of all, you can see that she's about to have a baby or have a big change in her life potentially, right? You might throw her a party. You might be excited. Of course, this is when we're actually in offices or workplaces. You might be excited when she brings that baby into the office before she comes back to work or he does as well, right? Everybody oohs and ahhs over how cute they are. When she or he comes back, they might put pictures up in their cube at their office.
None of that happens around elder care. Don't bring your elderly parent in. Nobody throws you a party, right? You're probably not hanging up pictures of somebody who's at their end of life. So it can stay invisible if we let it stay invisible. So I think that's part of it as well.
Wendy Fong:
Yeah. You mentioned before, it's a difficult time. It's a time of grief. So it's hard to celebrate that. It can be hard to talk about those type of emotions, especially in a work environment, but then you don't feel as much support as you probably need, that we probably need through this difficult time.
Liz O'Donnell:
It can be very othering. It really, yeah. I remember I came back to work after my dad passed away and was in the conference room, and one of my coworkers was planning her wedding, and she was saying something about she didn't know how to plan, how much alcohol for the number of guests. I mean, I wasn't even thinking because this was my reality. I said, "Well, when I planned my dad's funeral, this is what I did." I was a little bit older than everyone else. They were in their 20s and 30s and I was in late 40s, 50s at the point, and I just killed the mood. I made everybody so uncomfortable, and it didn't even occur to me because I just had practical advice about planning an event.
Wendy Fong:
Yeah. Well, like you said, that was your reality and that's what it was. It's interesting when we talk about even grief and death in our society, and it is a little stigmatized. It's something that is not a table topic, that it's difficult for people to grapple with, but I feel like it's something that needs to be a little more normalized. For us to be able to accept the process, we need to be able to talk about it more openly. I feel like it's part of the process also of accepting that our parents are aging and that we need to deal with this issue now instead of being reactive.
Liz O'Donnell:
Yeah. I hear a couple things. In the Facebook community, I hear a lot when people are going through end of life with their parents. They say, "I wish there had been more conversation about this. I didn't know what to expect." If there were more conversations ... You can see a book series, right? What to Expect When They're Dying? I mean, every death is different, but there are certain things that would help if we were prepared for, and there's really no place to have those conversations.
The other part of it is when you are present at somebody's death or when you lose someone that you love, it is a profound, profound experience, much like birth is, but there's nowhere to process that in polite company. I mean, the fact that we're having this conversation, it's not a conversation. You hear it on many podcasts.
So when you do come back to work or you are showing up at the office every day, I mean, it can just shift your perspective and your reality, and you have nowhere to really put that information. I used to make a joke sort of, but also made people really uncomfortable that I'm like ... I have been present at four deaths. It is really hard after being with somebody and assisting them through that transition and then to come back to work and really care about the corporate mission statement that's tacked up on a plastic banner. So I'm like, "I have a whole new perspective on life. You've got your goofy company mission statement. I need a little time to adjust back into life."
The other thing is, especially I think about women, if you are a woman who gave birth and you're in a group of girlfriends who gave birth, at some point, you're going to tell birth stories, right? At some point with your girlfriends you're like, "Oh, I was in labor for 36 hours, and I had these drugs." We don't tell death stories, but we maybe have been witnessed to this totally profound experience. We as a society, there's nowhere to put that or ever process that or share that. So then you have these caregivers coming back to work and you don't see their grief necessarily, but it's a whole other level.
Wendy Fong:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, thankfully, there are those online communities like on workingdaughters.com, and I'm sure there's other groups out there to at least offer that support, but yeah, there is no space to talk about it. I was just thinking about the policies for my last company. You could take four months off for paid maternity leave, but you get three days off for bereavement after a family member passes away.
Liz O'Donnell:
Right. Yeah. Well, yeah, the maternity leave is designed to aid somebody else, the child, but where do you process your stuff? Yeah. People always ask me, "So what are companies supposed to do?" One of the things I say is think about how to infuse compassion into your organization. Then they'll always say, "Oh, yeah. Wait, how do you do that?" I actually don't have the answer to how you do that, but I think management teams sit down and talk about it just by taking the steps, to have the conversation to say, "Are we a compassionate organization? How do we create a culture of care?" Just by having the conversation, they're going to shift the culture somewhat in the right direction. I think it's an important step.
Wendy Fong:
Yeah. I think especially during the pandemic, SHRM is seeing the need to be more compassionate, empathetic. As we start to teach our leaders and managers to have that emotional intelligence, it's not necessarily a skill that you're born with, but you have to learn to support your employees and to be in someone else's shoes. I think that can open up the conversation for not just that we went through with COVID, but also with elder care as we're seeing this generation of aging parents, of baby boomers living longer, and our employees stepping up as working daughters and sons, how can workplace cultures support them in their work role? I think you mentioned having flexible maybe schedules, and also benefits. Benefits really help, allowing people to take time off so they can caregive and still be able to have their jobs at the same time.
Liz O'Donnell:
Yeah. I mean, flexibility, people always ask, "Well, what do you advise companies?" Flexibility to me is the number one benefit, if you want to call it a benefit, because it's the difference between me taking the entire day off to take my mother to the doctor or a few hours off or me taking the entire day off. You were talking about the paid caregiver who cancels the night before or shows up late. I wanted her to take the very first doctor's appointment so that I didn't lose the whole day of work, and she was just super slow in the morning. She just couldn't get up and go, and she wanted the noon appointment or you take your parents to the doctor for one thing, and then they send you to the lab and then they send you to the pharmacy, and what on paper should be a one-hour doctor's appointment is a four-hour doctor appointment. So that flexibility, for companies it's like, "Do you want them out all day or do you want them out for a few hours? Help me help you make it work."
Wendy Fong:
Exactly, and it's not that I don't want to work. I still need a job. I still need to pay the bills, but to have that flexibility like maybe I need to work in the evenings or on the weekends or just squeeze in time in between appointments wherever you can I think is a big help.
Liz O'Donnell:
Yeah. In fact, I hear from Working Daughters all the time. It's like, "My company is the perception I don't want to work. Are you kidding?" Back to what you were talking about about control like, "Oh, my God, I can't wait for TGIM. Thank God it's Monday," where I go somewhere where I'm competent and trained and know what I'm doing versus the weekend where I was all caregiving, where I'm untrained and it's unchartered and it's always hard and scary. "So back to work where I know what I'm doing." It's a mental break sometimes for people.
Wendy Fong:
That's true. That's true, some sense of normalcy where you know what to expect and nothing crazy is going to happen compared to the government I've seen is making some moves. I know in California they've expanded family medical leave. In California, they expanded a law. So employers with as few as five employees, they could get up to 12 weeks of unpaid FMLA, and for larger employers, I think they can get up to six months leave. It's not just for parents and children and spouses, but I think California has expanded it to siblings, grandparents because we're all living longer, grandchildren and domestic partners.
Liz O'Donnell:
Yeah. I see a lot of people in Working Daughter who are grandparents. They define the sandwich generation as they're caring for a partner and grandchildren because of whatever the situation is with their children, which is interesting. Well, that's fantastic to hear. Yeah. California has always been or recently anyway, in recent years, has been leading the charge on family-friendly workplace, which is fantastic. Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, another parallel to parenting that I find, with parenting, there was always the conversations about work or stay at home, daycare or home-based care, all of those things, and it happens also in the elder care community with like, "Well, she's bringing her mother in to live with her and I'm sending my mother to a nursing home. Am I a bad person? Is there guilt and is there judgment?" and all that good stuff, right?
For me, it came down to I couldn't provide the level of care that my father needed or quite frankly deserved. I couldn't keep him clean. I couldn't keep him as well-nourished. It broke my heart thinking, "Am I a failure as a daughter? I'm moving him into a nursing home. I know it's not what he wanted." Then for a while in the nursing home, he actually thrived, and he deserved the dignity to be bathed in clean clothes and a well-balanced meal that I just couldn't give to him because he wouldn't listen to me and I wasn't a skilled nurse and I had a job and my own kids.
Wendy Fong:
Yeah, exactly. Also for the workplaces more to support caregivers by offering those benefits, by offering the flexible schedule, by having compassion and empathy come from the top down I think will be really helpful.
Liz O'Donnell:
Yeah. One of the things we're doing at Working Daughter is we're offering companies to enroll their employees in the Working Daughter membership program. It's almost a turnkey support program because there's so many things businesses can do. It's the flexible benefits, it's the backup elder care paid programs, it's the paid leave. There are all of those obvious things. Then there are these companies that provide geriatric care managers as workplace benefits, and that's a huge boom too. Then there's just the emotional community support, which is another piece of it. So just for me and you maybe sitting next to each other in cubes for three years but never knowing, "Oh, my God, you're going through it too? Can we talk?"
Wendy Fong:
Yeah or even companies offer employee assistance programs where they can have access to a therapist or to community groups to talk about these issues. So that's great. Working Daughter offers that benefit as well.
Liz O'Donnell:
Yeah. We just introduced that here because there was some data that came out that showed that, and SHRM produces tons of great data right around what work and caregivers need and the benefits, and some report came out that said a lot of caregivers are looking for affinity groups and support groups to navigate both the caregiving-specific issues as well as the career and caregiving issues, and just not to feel othered and not to feel alone.
I've started to talk to caregivers about what would it look like if you cared for yourself as well as you care for your parent or your spouse or your sibling or whoever it is you're caring for, and they're like, "I can't. I don't need time," but what if you shifted your mentality to thinking about yourself almost like your caree, as your patient as opposed to, "Oh, I need to fit in a workout. Yeah, that'll never happen." No. It's like this out of body experience like "Liz is somebody that I care for. So what does that look like?" because when I cared for my mom and dad, like I said, I showed up fierce and warrior were two of the words that often came to mind, what if I turned that fierceness on me? I was like, "Drink more water. Get more sleep." What if we did that for ourselves because we are incredible caregivers, but we don't think to turn it on ourselves and give ourselves that compassion.
Wendy Fong:
So one other question that came to mind. Should working daughters or sons talk to their bosses about their caregiving responsibilities? It almost seems fearful and we had talked about it. It's not exactly out in the open to talk about this type of grief and not all companies necessarily give the space of flexible benefits to take time off. So is this something we should talk about to your manager?
Liz O'Donnell:
Yeah. I always answer that with a big, huge fat it depends, and I say, ideally, we want to be in a situation where we can for a whole host of reasons. Your company can't support you if they don't know that you need support. Also, just from a managing up standpoint, you never want to surprise a boss, right? I think it's just a good policy to have in any part of your career. You don't ever want to surprise the boss. You want them to be prepared and so they can't prepare the business backup that might be needed if something happens in your caregiving situation.
So ideally, the answer is yes. However, I think everybody really needs to weigh that individually, and you can weigh that by looking at the cues around your organization, and getting a sense of whether or not the company walks the walk and talks the talk, and are they supportive of people with lives because, I mean, basically, whether it's parenting or caring for a parent or really being committed to volunteerism or something, basically, we're all walking into work every day with lives.
So we all need space to live our lives, right? So do you work for a company that's going to provide you that space or not or that's going to be supportive of that or not? So you can pick up queues. What does the management team do? Do they take time to care for their parents or meet the school bus or go to school plays? Do you feel safe? I think I just can't answer that question for other people because I just don't know if they're in a situation where they feel like they're not going to be tagged as somebody that, "We're not going to give Liz the promotion because she could be leaving in any second to care for her parents or she's going to cancel yet another business trip." So that's why I think it's really an individual question.
The thing I do say definitively, though, is I would love to see culture shift from asking for the details and people from having to feel the need to give the personal details. I think it's much more effective and powerful if I can say, I can come to you as my manager and say, "Wendy, I need to leave early next Wednesday," and instead of following that up with because I'm taking my dad to the oncologist, I could say, "Here's where my work stands. Here's my backup plan. Here's when I expect to be back online. I think everything's covered, and I'll see you on Thursday morning," as opposed to, "Can I take my dad to the doctor?" because then I'm coming at it from a much more professional standpoint and I'm signaling that I understand this is a business and I need to have the company covered and I want to make space for my life.
Then you as the manager don't have to play judge and jury like, "Oh, am I going to let Liz go early for the oncologist but I'm not going to let Jack over here leave for the school play?" It's more about, "Are the business needs covered? Let's take it from that perspective and then let's trust people live their lives." That to me would be the ideal.
Wendy Fong:
Yeah, that's definitely true. I mean, your manager just wants you to do your work and be successful in your role because you're running a business and they don't necessarily need to know all the details because, unfortunately, we do have our own unconscious biases that we bring to the workplace and to our lives that we may or may not be aware of. You don't want that to be counted against you, necessarily. Yeah. It all depends on your relationship with your direct manager and that trust that you have. So yeah, that's a great point to just say you need to take time off, but here are where all the projects stand. I think that's great advice. So what is the caregivers gain? I would love to hear from you personally what you love about caregiving in your heart and your experience.
Liz O'Donnell:
Yeah. I think a lot of what I love about caregiving is how I feel about writing and exercise. You don't necessarily love it as you're going through it. It's not fun for the alarm to go off at 5:00 AM and for you to get up and sweat and struggle, but you feel great for having exercised. As a writer, it's the same thing. Staring at that blank screen can be painful, but having written something is a great feeling.
So I think the caregivers gain is this research that I came across while I was writing the book, and it's a couple of professors out of Johns Hopkins and University of South Florida who have been studying caregivers for years. They found that caregivers compared to non-caregivers actually have better cognitive functioning, better physical strength, better self-esteem, and better emotional wellbeing overall.
What I love about their work is they don't negate all the other things we know and hear about caregiving, that it can be so hard, that it can be so stressful, that oftentime caregivers get run down and stressed and don't take care of themselves. Their research is and. They report that all of those things are true, the hard parts of caregiving, and caregiving having given care you come off the other side with these incredible gains basically and strengths.
So I like to mention that so that if a caregiver's listening and they're like, "Oh, I'm supposed to feel better, have better self-esteem. I'm exhausted, stressed out. I don't feel any of those things," I don't want them to feel like they're missing the boat or they're doing anything wrong. There are moments that are going to be really hard and then there's going to be a real reward for that as well, but I do like people to know because, hopefully, by knowing that there is this gain, maybe as you go through caregiving, you can have a longer term perspective and you can think, "This is going to be really hard and I'm going to be better for having done it."
For me, personally, caregivers gain comes from knowing that I showed up 100% for the people who needed me when they needed me, and there's no cleaner, better feeling, especially when the people you love have passed away to feel like nothing was left unsaid or undone, and that you connected with them in that relationship in a way that mattered so much.
I mean, certainly, and I write about it in the book, I snapped and had my ugly moments with my mother, my father, and my husband as I was caring for them. So it wasn't about showing up perfectly, but it was leaving it all on the field. That's just a really good feeling when you're on the other side. Then I think about you want companies to be able to give caregivers the space to be able to do that, right?
Wendy Fong:
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. That's really uplifting to hear and that you get all these great benefits. Science shows us you get those cognitive, emotional benefits and you get those benefits in terms of your relationship with your parents. I would say I wasn't the closest to my parents growing up. They're working all the time. They're first generation immigrants to America, had to raise four kids, but as I had to start taking care of my mother, our relationship has grown a lot closer now, and getting to know more stories about how she grew up and the experiences that she went through when I was growing up that I had no idea about. It's been really great seeing us bond and grow closer together during this time. I realized that she has a quirky sense of humor that I never knew about before because she was all busy working or we had our mother-teenager moments of rebellion where we wouldn't speak to each other for a while. So it's really nice to have that relationship rekindled again.
Liz O'Donnell:
That's the opportunity too. A lot of people refer to elder care as a role reversal when I start parenting my parents. It's not something I subscribe to or necessarily believe in. I think there's an opportunity to just have a new relationship with your parents that maybe doesn't have a label. I had the same thing, the mother-teenager. My mother said everything wrong. I was embarrassed just to have a mother, right? Then even when she was a grandmother and you're a new mother and you're so particular and Nana would sweep in and give the kids snack that I didn't want them to have. So I was constantly like, "Oh, oh," with my mom, still rolling my eyes well into my 30s.
Then when she got sick, we just had a different role, and all of those things didn't matter. I wasn't overanalyzing everything she said. There's an opportunity if you can find it with your elderly parent to just move into a whole different role. So that's nice.
Brigid Schulte, who is with New America, which is one of those public policy think tanks, and she wrote a book called Overwhelmed about working parenting, and she writes for the Washington Post, and she was talking about, I think, maybe her sibling passed away at some point and how she was able to be with him and how that shouldn't be a luxury that's only available to some of us. So how do companies, again, create the space so that we all can experience that gain and have that feeling? We're just going to be a much mentally healthier society walking around if we can do that.
Wendy Fong:
Yeah, and that's definitely a way for companies to be more competitive too in getting the best candidates, right? Re-looking at your benefit structure, your compensation and benefits, and seeing what can you offer to support caregivers as people are looking for different jobs. I know as we get through this pandemic, whatever benefits come into play, I think will be a big factor too.
Liz O'Donnell:
Yeah. That's a really good point. People are just looking for change. I think part of the caregivers gain too is I say to people, I'm like, "I don't know why everyone wouldn't hire a former elder caregiver because, I mean, we know how to negotiate like nobody's business. We know attention to detail where fierce advocates, as I've mentioned, who wouldn't want that on their team?"
Wendy Fong:
Exactly. All right, Liz. Well, it's been great talking to you. As we close, any other final thoughts or anything else you'd like to share?
Liz O'Donnell:
Well, first, thank you again for bringing attention to this topic. I think as I mentioned, I think we're in early days of understanding how to support working caregivers at work. I think we shouldn't get discouraged that it's not further along. So we need to keep having these conversations because we have a lot to solve for.
Wendy Fong:
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Well, thank you for being on the show, Liz. It's been a great conversation. Check out her book, Working Daughter, and also the community, workingdaughter.com, so working daughter and sons, it's inclusive of everyone, of all caregivers. Is that the best way our listeners can find you and connect with you?
Liz O'Donnell:
Yup. Workingdaughter.com pretty much points you to everything else, the book and the Facebook community and the Working Daughter at Work, so yes, yes, and I'm glad you mentioned that. Working sons are always welcome.
Wendy Fong:
That's great. Well, we've come to the end of our show. Thank you again, Liz, for being here and taking time out of your busy schedule. It's been a great conversation and I was so excited to talk to you after I read the book and definitely has a special place in my heart as a caregiver for my mother. Thank you for writing the book for us caregivers out there.
Thank you all you listeners for listening. If you haven't already, please subscribe so you'll never miss an episode, and be sure to rate and review this show wherever you listen a podcast. Who knows? We might even read your review on a future episode, and feel free to reach me on Twitter, @SHRMWendy or on LinkedIn. If you'd like to learn more about the Honest HR podcast, about myself or the other hosts, you can head over to shrm.org/honesthr, and to learn more about other SHRM podcasts, go to shrm.org/podcast. So take care of one another. Hope to see you in the next episode, and adieu.
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