When Children Are Caregivers

When I was growing up I had friends whose grandparents lived with them. I remember occasions when such friends had to leave an event early or couldn’t hang out because they had to do something for these grandparents, while their own parents were working. Sometimes a grandma with dementia had to be looked in on to make sure she didn’t wander up the stairs, unable to get down again. Sometimes a grandpa needed help with a bedpan or sheets changed when it was too late. At the time, I didn’t give it much thought beyond, “I’m glad I don’t have to worry about that!”

Now, as an adult and a parent, I find myself torn between indignant and impressed at this article in the New York Times about children acting as caregivers in their families, for both parents and grandparents. Indignant because some of the burdens the children in the article carry seem like far too much — like an 11-year old administering shots or watching a parent for signs of an oncoming seizure to be sure and medicate her to prevent it — impressed because these are young people who are making sacrifices for the sake of their families and exercising values beyond selfish individualism.

Some experts consulted for the article explain that children have been family caregivers forever, but only now and in this culture is such a role problematised. Many of the families in these situations are afraid to let anyone outside the family know of their circumstances for fear of losing children to social services or other, less serious stigma issues.

And now a program in the public schools in Florida is taking children who care for relatives and giving them counselling and weekend breaks from their duties while also training them in caregiving skills. It looks like a great program, but I have to wonder (the article doesn’t say) whether these kids are getting nursing assistant certification or a practical nursing license from the program. If we’re going to train 11, 12, 13-year olds to change sheets for bedridden patients, give injections of critical medications, learn to recognise the signs of seizure, bathe elderly grandparents, I think we should give them a license and pay them the crummy eight or nine dollars an hour that such care costs in the marketplace.

Because the unwritten subtext of this story of child heros is that we are a society that doesn’t care for those in need. We throw the responsibility for that to the private sector which ends up meaning: children. The people in the article are either single parents, low-income or under-insured and can’t afford to pay for this care their kids are doing for them. There’s a fine line somewhere between kids learning healthy family responsibility and a society shamefully burdening its children with the work of adults because it is unwilling to pay for that work.