Does Caregiving Affect Women Differently?

This isn’t a new phenomena born out of the 60s, and I’ve met many men who are the primary caregivers for their moms or dads–and certainly their spouses–and they do are tender when needed, tough when required, meticulous and thoughtful.

And yet, we default and think that the women of the clan/family unit will be the one to take on this role.

It doesn’t matter who care gives. It’s often now a matter of timing–many men are now free to have jobs that work out of home, or they retire early, or they are only children, or they happen to live in the same city as their parents–so let’s begin to dispel this myth.

But if you are a woman, and you’re a caregiver–perhaps you’ll recognize some similar reactions and emotions to caregiving.

Throughout all of history, there have always been an array of strong, amazing women–from politicians, queens, equestrians, entrepreneurs, to the more traditional women’s roles of say, nursing and teaching. All of us are unique and our caregiving will express our personality and temperaments. 

When caregiving enters a woman’s life, her thoughts and perceptions are slightly different as daughter or wife than if she were the son or husband.

I can only speak for myself.

I became a caregiver slowly–over the years after my adoptive dad died and my mother began to need more and more care. At first, it was a daily phone call, a weekly visit. At the end, it had become a 24 hour a day way of life–to care for my mother who had Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and heart disease, in my home as I wiped her brow and wet her lips–and we waited for her passing.

A lot happened in between.

I wrote every day to express what caregiving was doing to me. I wrote to express reason of trying to figure out my “womanhood” in the midst of this.

I wrote because I had to figure out how to navigate my way through–and somehow maintain a sense of self that felt threatened by sleep deprivation, middle of the night awakenings, multi-tasking children and a husband with nursing responsibilities of baths, pills, and therapies.

I was already a daughter, then a mother to three of my own daughters. I was a woman in my late 30s, a wife, a friend, a small business owner (I had started and was the director of a small private school outside Atlanta).

Caregiving made me acutely aware of my woman-ness, of what I had to offer my mother. And what I didn’t. More than once, I had to face that I wasn’t strong enough to lift my mother up off the floor after a fall.

 I was aware that my mother “obeyed” my husband and would calm down, stop pitching a fit at the mere sound of his deep, authoritative voice. She certainly didn’t respond to me that way!

I was also aware how I could soothe her, understand her needs, her lacks.

I wrote about redefining beauty as I looked at my mother’s aging body–her wrinkles reminding me of a beautiful taut sail with no wind to drive it, fill it out.

I wrote about sex, and how very difficult it was to let go and be a woman, naked and vulnerable–with kids, dogs, cats, and my mom down the hall, one door away.

I wrote about my mother’s clothes, about broaches and pearls, and pocketbooks, and how very long her “accoutrements” stayed with her, defined her. I wrote about the 20+ shoes, gorgeous snake-skin, leather pumps, patent leather shoes that were no longer needed but hung on the shoe rack on the back of the door–waiting–not quite aware they would never be slipped on again.

I wrote about my mother’s hands, and how even after Alzheimer’s took her abiity to remember, to speak–it did not take her gestures. She still lifted her elegant fingers and placed them on her jawline in just the same fashion she had for the last 40 years of my life. My mother, her essence was at least there in gesture.

I wrote about my urge to get out among the living, to shop, to get the oil changed, buy a dress–to be engaged in things people do to stay busy. I wrote about my hunger to make a margarita, slip on a silky skirt and feel, feel, feel pretty again.

What does pretty mean?

Is that the definition of being a woman? Certainly not, but I do recognize that it’s a need I have–and I don’t think it’s just a reflection of society.  Caregiving certainly challenged my perception of “pretty.”

Caregiving gave me cause to look at, examine every aspect of my femininity.

Not necessarily the sexy fishnet stocking variety, but that long, long after estrogen,

I still will have the right to say I’m a woman. At any age.

My mother retained a sense of regalness, almost entitlement to her gender.

Caregiving rang out in my head like a bell–calling the three generations of women–my mother, me, and my daughters to an almost rallying cry.

We are connected. We are history, legacy, present, and future.

What we do today will continue to reverberate.

My mother, my example. Me, my daughter’s example. A living example. What will I choose to do today? What words, what actions are mine to pass on? What secrets of mine to do they know?

What is it that do we not say that echoes through our halls?

I remember one particularly difficult day when my middle daughter and I were in the bathroom having one of those “mirror conversations.” My mother had grown increasingly violent, out of control–her Alzheimer’s was like a hungry dog demanding I fill its bowl, a bowl with no end.

“Why don’t you just put her in nursing home?” My daughter said, aware of my heartbreak and exhaustion. It wasn’t said in a cold manner–more like, “You don’t have to kill yourself, you know.”

“I won’t say it’s not a possibility,” I said, “but one day, you and I will be standing right here, in front of this mirror, dressing for my mother’s funeral–and I’ve got to look at me in this mirror, look at you in this mirror, and I’ve got to know that I did all I could.”

Somehow, we got through. We.

I cared for my mother. My daughters cared for me. Yes, they sat with my mother, but their love, their devotion was for me. The torch had been passed.

Yes, at times I almost lost my woman-ly-ness along with my sanity–and almost my freedom as a law abiding citizen–aka JAIL TIME for losing it!). Weight, scraggly hair, bone crushing exhaustion, can’t put two words together, an aching for relief so bitter because I knew relief would only come with death–it was all there.

But like a sail, new winds come. I survived.

I’d like to think that my woman-ness guided me, that intuition kicked in, that I was able as a woman, and a daughter to give my mother something she needed.

How does caregiving affect a man? I don’t know. I’d love for someone to share. 

~I’m Carol O’Dell, and I’m the author of Mothering Mother. I hope you’ll visit again.