by External Article | Sep 9, 2023 | Caring for a Parent, Finances |
Tara Driver would love to retire before age 70. But it’s not going to be easy. The 51-year-old’s finances are still recovering from the hit they took more than a decade ago, after she spent about eight years caring for her ailing father. During that time, every extra...
by External Article | Sep 6, 2023 | Caring for a Parent, Generation X, Generation Z, Long Distance Caregiving, Long Term Caregiving, Millennial Generation, Occasional Caregiving, Sandwich Generation, Short Term Caregiving |
“For most older Americans, care will come from unpaid family members or friends, who contributed around $600 billion worth of free labor to the economy in 2021, according to AARP. That care is not, of course, free for those providing it. Dwane Hodges is a...
by External Article | Jun 16, 2023 | Finances, Long Term Caregiving |
It’s a retirement concern few of us want to face: At some point, four out of five older Americans will need help with daily needs like bathing, dressing, using the toilet or preparing meals. Paying for such long-term care presents retirees with difficult choices....
by External Article | May 20, 2023 | Housing |
“It’s not just packing and unpacking,” Ms. Buysse said. “It’s working with the clients and the family for weeks or months, going through a lifetime of possessions. You need to be a good listener.” … My sister and I hired a senior move manager for our father, who...
by External Article | Mar 28, 2023 | Caring for a Parent, Finances, Millennial Generation, Sandwich Generation |
Randi Schofield tried her best to not dwell on all the ways her life changed, on the pieces of herself that got lost in the shuffle. She was a 34-year-old single mother who, not long ago, was in the throes of a big life transition. She had left her full-time job of...
by External Article | Mar 25, 2023 | Caring for a Parent, Finances, Millennial Generation, Sandwich Generation |
Six years ago, I took over my father’s finances. … I was 25 and had just moved in with my boyfriend, who is now my husband, and was working in New York as a health reporter making what felt like barely enough to cover my commute. I knew nothing about money — and...
by External Article | Feb 17, 2023 | Caring for a Child |
In my family, we talk about hard things. That’s not to say we are morose. We are not. Nor are we particularly profound. If anything, we lean into the ridiculous, and the silly, whenever possible. At the same time, in over three years of managing our daughter Orli’s...
by External Article | Dec 15, 2022 | Caregiver News, For Friends & Family, For Professional Caregivers |
At a hospital in a Chicago suburb last winter, there were so few nurses that psychiatric patients with Covid were left waiting a full day for beds, and a single aide was on hand to assist with 32 infected patients. Nurses were so distraught about the inadequate...
by External Article | Dec 3, 2022 | Caring for a Friend, Caring for a Neighbor, For Friends & Family, Planning |
When her sister died three years ago, Ms. Ingersoll joined the ranks of older Americans considered “kinless”: without partners or spouses, children or siblings. Covid-19 has largely suspended her occasional get-togethers with friends, too. Now, she said, “my social...
by External Article | Oct 4, 2022 | Caring for a Parent, Caring for a Sibling, Long Term Caregiving |
My mother has an undiagnosed mental illness that makes her incapable of accepting reality and that has caused her to be emotionally abusive my entire life…What options do my sister and I have as she ages and her living situation deteriorates further? And what...
by External Article | Aug 25, 2022 | Caring for a Romantic Partner, Finances, Long Term Caregiving |
Within weeks of the Tarpy’s date, both knew they had found their forever partner. But three months after Mr. Contreras proposed in his Salinas, Calif., home in December 2016 and Ms. Long said an ecstatic “yes,” Ms. Long sat him down for a talk. “I told him, ‘Mark,...
by External Article | Aug 19, 2022 | Caring for a Sibling, Short Term Caregiving |
I am the only family member with whom Jay maintained contact for the last three decades. Over that time, we communicated exclusively through email and cards I sent to a post office box. … The hospital discharged Jay with a bag hanging from his chest to drain...
by External Article | Jul 22, 2022 | Caring for a Romantic Partner, Long Term Caregiving |
That attack marked the beginning of our struggle to navigate a relationship transformed by trauma. Since then, I think I’ve read just about everything that has been written about how to support a loved one healing from post-traumatic stress. Among other things, I’ve...
by External Article | Jul 12, 2022 | Caring for a Child, Finances, Millennial Generation, Working Family Caregivers |
A dearth of child care and elder care choices is causing many women to reorganize their working lives and prompting some to forgo jobs altogether, hurting the economy at a moment when companies are desperate to hire, and forcing trade-offs that could impair careers....
by External Article | Jul 6, 2022 | Grief |
I began leaving voice-mail messages for my mother about a month after she died. It was February last year, during some of the darkest days of the pandemic for my family. My teenage daughters were mourning their grandmother while largely cut off from their friends and...
by External Article | Jun 15, 2022 | Art, Caring for a Sibling, Millennial Generation |
Arbery, who grew up in Dallas with seven sisters in a conservative Catholic milieu similar to that of “Heroes,” had always wanted to write a play about his relationship with Julia, who is two years older (as she likes to remind him). But he didn’t want to write, as he...
by External Article | Jun 1, 2022 | Care Work Library, Caring for a Child, Housing, Long Term Caregiving |
Sabrina, who was given a diagnosis of autism coupled with a rare genetic disorder, has exhibited aggressive behavior since she was a little girl. Now she towers over her parents. When she is happy, she gives them great big hugs, knocking them slightly off balance....
by External Article | May 9, 2022 | Finances, For Friends & Family, Long Term Caregiving |
Adult Protective Services agencies in every state receive reports of possible neglect, self-neglect, abuse or exploitation of older people and other vulnerable adults. But agency workers consistently face a bedeviling question: Does the adult in question have the...
by External Article | Mar 26, 2022 | Death & Dying |
Where do people most want to be when they die? At home, they tell researchers — in familiar surroundings, in comfort, with the people they love. an article this month in The New England Journal of Medicine that pointedly asks, “Is There Really ‘No Place Like Home’?”...
by External Article | Mar 13, 2022 | Generation X, Housing, Long Term Caregiving, Silent generation |
Ms. McWhinney-Morse was in her mid-60s when she and a handful of others her age started laying the groundwork for Beacon Hill Village. But younger villagers are surfacing. Jenn Prunty founded My Glacier Village in the Flathead Valley of Montana four years ago, when...
by External Article | Mar 12, 2022 | Finances, Housing, Long Term Caregiving |
Ms. Biteranta now receives all of her health care through PACE, which monitors her, along with 120 other seniors, meticulously. PACE supplies much of her social life, too. “Here, they schedule you for appointments,” said Ms. Biteranta, 74, a retired nurse. “They send...
by External Article | Jan 14, 2022 | Care Work Library, Finances, Generation X, Long Term Caregiving, Planning |
A diagnosis may be alarming enough, but equally frightening can be the costs for medical treatments, home renovations and other expenses. Some people with disabling conditions may be forced to retire earlier than they had planned, resulting in a loss of income and...
by External Article | Dec 25, 2021 | Caring for a Parent, Death & Dying |
My mother and father never married. This meant, as my mother explained, that I was his legal next of kin, responsible for making his medical decisions. This responsibility, already complex because of his lack of a living will, would prove to be even more fraught...
by External Article | Nov 9, 2021 | 24/7 Caregiving, Caring for a Child, For Friends & Family, Millennial Generation, Occasional Caregiving |
I am currently helping friends with their severely disabled child. The child needs round-the-clock supervision; this is especially challenging during the night, as someone must monitor the child’s condition at all times. Because of the pandemic and my friends’...
by External Article | Oct 5, 2021 | Care Work Library, Caring for a Parent, Generation X, Occasional Caregiving |
My father and I have not been especially close for all of my adult life because of his inability to communicate or relate to me, to others or to the world in general in a meaningful way. As he has aged, his danger and menace have pretty much disappeared, and he has...
by External Article | Aug 31, 2021 | Caring for a Romantic Partner, For Friends & Family, Long Term Caregiving |
What are your thoughts on the spouse of an early-onset Alzheimer’s patient dating while said patient is still alive? By way of background, my mother was the full-time caregiver of my stepfather until a few months ago, when he was moved to assisted living, and she is...
by External Article | Aug 24, 2021 | Caring for a Child, Generation X, Long Term Caregiving |
Currently, only three states in the country explicitly include special ed students in their sex-ed requirements. Six other states provide optional resources adapted for more accessible sex-ed curriculums. Thirty-six states fail to mention students with special needs...
by External Article | Aug 22, 2021 | Care Work Library, Finances |
This year, the federal government ordered hospitals to begin publishing a prized secret: a complete list of the prices they negotiate with private insurers. The insurers’ trade association had called the rule unconstitutional and said it would “undermine competitive...
by External Article | Aug 12, 2021 | Care Work Library |
The nation’s caregiving work force is fraying. Paid providers are overworked and undervalued, often forced to take on multiple jobs or turn to public assistance just to scrape by. Many family caregivers are struggling as well, sacrificing their own health and...
by External Article | Aug 11, 2021 | Care Work Library, Caring for a Parent, Death & Dying, Planning |
Some of the hardest conversations I have in my work involve telling families managing the debilitating chronic illness of a loved one at home that they are essentially on their own. Most do not realize that medical insurance does not pay for long-term home care....
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