You might think you know who makes up the largest group of caregivers in this country. Nursing home aides? No, if we're talking about older adults, it's unpaid caregivers, and it's often women. The government estimates that there are about 53 million such caregivers, and even though it can be a full-time and physically and emotionally difficult - it's typically not recognized as a job. We are joined by two people who do this work.
Dawn Shedrick is a social worker who is a caregiver to her mother. Also with us is reporter Kat McGowan. Let me start with you, Kat. You're a science and health reporter, but a few years ago, you began to focus on caregivers. What made you want to look at caregiving? I've been a journalist for decades, and then caregiving happened to me, first with my sister-in-law and then my two parents. And I realized, looking around, there was very little conversation about adult caregiving.
People are living longer with more chronic diseases, and more and more care is coming out of the hospital and into the home. So caregivers are asked to do things that, a generation ago, only nurses would've done, all unpaid, mostly untrained.
I think it's, like, our largest unpaid health care workforce. My mom has a progressive form of multiple sclerosis. By the time I was finishing college in , that was around the time that she started to require the use of a cane.
And it has been quite the journey as her MS has advanced to the point where now she hasn't walked unassisted since She pretty much needs assistance with all of her activities of daily living at this point. I'm grateful that I do get to work for myself. And so even though I have control over my schedule and the work that I do and the work that I take on as a consultant and trainer, what a lot of people who have not been a caregiver don't realize is that it literally is a job.
