Every Mother is a Working Mother
By Phoebe Jones and Margaret Prescod
The AARP recently released Home Alone Revisited, a report of the nation’s 40 million family caregivers, which said, “In the current health-care environment, it is presumed that every home is a potential hospital and every service that the person needs can be provided by an unpaid family member, with only occasional visits by a primary-care provider, nurse, or therapist.”
This is an acknowledgement of what any of us who have cared for loved ones know — that the home is the new hospital staffed by millions of unpaid family caregivers doing medical jobs.
It (almost) goes without saying that the vast majority of those caregivers are women. (We say “almost” because in the attempt by researchers and others to be inclusive, the sex of the majority of people actually doing the work is hidden. We say “women and others” or “mothers and other caregivers” to be both accurate and inclusive.)
As women’s rights campaigners, we have seen that many caregivers are mothers and others looking after both young children and elderly parents.
