All the Older Single Ladies in Poverty

[mntleo2]

14. Caregiving = Zero Years for Social Security

Meaning by the subject line that Social Security calls any unpaid care giving a woman does as not deserving of performing any "work" or any consideration while calculating if she will receive Social Security. If she has worked for a wage in her life, it is often WAY less than men because men usually leave that unpaid work to women and do not take as much time off in their work life, continuing to receive wages while their women perform this unpaid labor. This enables men to collect more Social Security than their women do. As a matter of fact according to labor studies, women lose over $400,000 over a work lifetime in paid wages after they have been performing all this unpaid labor ~ and never forget that the loss of those wages are calulated as about $.75 for every man's dollar! Medicare refuses to support relative care givers and often simply dump all the work on women while expecting her to either perform two jobs both paid and unpaid, or to make the sacrifice her loved one needs to do this work for no pay.

Thanks to Welfare Reform, which as well considers this unpaid work as "doing nothing", we often consider that this unpaid care giving "does nothing" for our communities. We often think this care giving tasks for women only is about child rearing. But this is not so. Women are often faced with more than 3 X in their lives where they must make the agonizing choice of caring for a loved one or working for a wage. This is because they also face these choices with their elders and their spouses as well. They are often forced to live off the income of their loved one in order to perform this care and then after this care is done, the kid grows up, the loved one dies, they are left with nothing.

You would be amazed at how many older women live in their cars simply because after this care, there is nothing left for them, because it often uses up the all the accumulated "wealth" and resources of the person for whom they cared. She gets little or no community or government support for the 24/7 care that has no sick leave, no medical benefits, no rest and often goes on for years and years. But her husband and her relatives and the community think she "does nothing" all day while care giving and even call her "lazy".

But the AARP has done some very detailed studies showing that this unpaid work actually saves this country over 450 billion a year! . Why is this? Because it would cost that much to build and maintain institutions to replace this unpaid work so that women can go out there making rich men richer saying, "Do you want fries with that?" You can read about this study here: http://www.aarp.org/home-family/caregiving/info-10-2012/home-alone-family-caregivers-providing-complex-chronic-care.html

Americans in general think care giving is "doing nothing" and this suffering is our fault. They are so focused on how much more valued paid work is that they think that their own mothers who cared for them "did nothing" while performing this work. They stay silent about what could be done to value this work more. They will not even consider the $Billions these women saved themselves so they do not have to pay more taxes to create institutions which would in fact be more subsidies for corporations, not their families.

Other developed and undeveloped countries value this work and support it with such things as paid wages while they are performing this unpaid care giving, medical care, and old age pensions because they consider this work as "counting", it is "doing something" so that women do not suffer in their old age as American women do. They are not like Americans who will say without thinking that anyone performing this unpaid care giving, "Does not work..." They will not even change their way of thinking enough to pay respect and homage to this hard work by simply saying instead, "she works inside the home..."

So while we wring our hands about this report, well we cause this suffering for our own older female loved ones (though I often wonder how "loved" they are).

If there could be anything done about this it would be to change our attitudes about what is "work" as far as what unpaid labor contribute toward their communities. But Americans won't. All we hear is the wild cheering of creating 'jobs, jobs, jobs' as *only* extending to paid labor and not only ignore unpaid care as "doing anything" but actually denigrate and punish older women after they have done this work. They prefer to allow their own mothers to live in a car because see, she "did not work".

Believe me I could write a book about this as I have been advocating for low income people who mostly constitute women for over 30 years. I wish I had the humor of Michael Moore or John Fugelsang to write it or produce a movie, but I am too angry ...

My 2 cents
Cat in Seattle