The challenges associated with parental responsibilities are obvious and much-discussed. For many scientists they can seem overwhelming, limiting and sometimes ultimately career-destroying. The recent booklet published by the Royal Society (Parent Carer Scientist) that I wrote about before, attempts to bust some of the myths and show the many different ways individuals and families have found to cope. However, carer can convey a different set of responsibilities: caring for an older family member such as a parent, or even a sibling. The challenge of coping with these is every bit as taxing as caring for young children, albeit the manifestation can be rather different.
For my generation, caring for elderly relatives is likely to be the dominant responsibility but it can start much younger. I have had students who have suddenly found themselves thrust into situations where parental health becomes a big issue, disrupting their PhD studies, requiring frequent absences from the lab bench and draining their energies with anxieties for the future. Ill health, even death of a close relative, can hit anyone at any point and scientists are as susceptible as anyone to being thrown off balance by this.
Caring must be seen to encompass this much broader and, in general, less happy set of demands. If one is a parent of small children as well it is obviously going to be particularly distressing as limited energy and resources get pulled in too many directions simultaneously. For others it seems one has hardly seen the children leave their schooldays behind when a parent suddenly regresses from adulthood to childhood or at least dependency. Where is that happy moment when one is free of responsibilities, in this case?
What makes the situation liable to be particularly fraught is the lack of predictability. The father who is happily living independently but suddenly has a fall and needs nursing back to full mobility; the mother who may already be living with you as dementia takes hold but then starts wandering off and getting lost requiring multiple police interventions. An infection (and its treatment) that might be mild in a healthy adult can interfere with regular medication in the elderly and lead to all kinds of unanticipated consequences ranging from chronic anaemia to miserable confusion. There is no planning for these eventualities which always seem to blow up so as to coincide with a long-planned trip to the Far East , exam-marking or some other already pressured and difficult moment. In my case it was sitting on jury service as my mother underwent a knee replacement operation. The care may need to be offered hundreds of miles away. How should a scientist (or any other professional) cope? How flexible can and should institutions be? My department was wonderfully accommodating when, more than a decade ago I went to spend a week in a hospice supporting a relative – but then I had no teaching duties at that precise point: it occurred outside term so that was easy. But no one questioned me about the time away nor tried to deduct pay. I was (and am) very grateful for their support.
We don’t talk about these issues. We should. These are not simply issues for women since they are just as likely to impact on adult sons as daughters. Our modern society does not provide a ready network of neighbours who can step in to plug a gap in caring or a handful of spinster relatives who can be summoned at will. Why not daycare for the elderly, I heard one fraught woman ask as she had to rush back home, again, to try to find her wandering and confused father whom she thought she had left safely in her home?
I have no solutions to offer. But we need to recognize that life will throw up obstacles of unexpected kinds and find ways to cope flexibly. Instead these topics seem somehow to be off limits. It was Sylvia Ann Hewlett who introduced me to the phrase ‘elder care’ in her book Off Ramps and On Ramps. She explores what holds professional women back, and what might be done so as not to lose so many talented women to the workforce, but elder care is actually a unisex issue. Just as with the Royal Society’s book of life stories, we should be willing to explore how to cope with the unexpected at whatever stage of your career life throws this curved ball at you.
For me, there was long warning of the oncoming need for care. My wife was diagnosed with MS when pregnant with our second child at 30. We have negligible savings except for a house in which I steadily accumulated value by rebuilding and moving on. Through her 30s and 40s she had relatively infrequent replases followed by long periods of relative remission, though she lost most of bladder control in her 40s and bowel by 55. At 50 she had just finished an MPhil and was embarking on a PhD when her brain began to fail. By 55 she could no longer reliably cook a meal. She is now 70. I am still working enthusiastically and caring less so. It is just a chore with little thanks. Diagnosed with Vascular dementia as well as the brain damage from MS and rapidly losing her legs the future isn’t promising.
I am able to charge high rates as a specialist. I can earn enough to buy in elements of care and even to place Sue in an expensive care home occasionally while I recharge.
My exit from an academic career at 53 (she is a couple of years older) was partly forced by my inability to keep up with longer term aims while coping with this. The short term efforts of consultancy are much easier to deal with.
I am now 69, Sue is 70, her behaviour is becoming more random. But the work is what keeps me sane and I will continue.
My deepest concern is for carers who are not in my happy position. People with intellect will find an outlet for it somehow. Low paid people who have to give up their lives for caring are treated as invisible in our present greedy society.
Elder care is a unisex issue but, as ever, an undue portion of the burden can fall on the female half of a couple even when it is the man’s parent who requires help. The pressures are often subtle “you deal so much better with him/ her”.