Working Daughter: A Guide to Caring for Your Aging Parents While Making a Living

Working Daughter is a revelatory look at who’s caring for our aging population and how these unpaid family caregivers are trying to manage caring for their parents, raising their children, and pursuing their careers. It tells the story of one woman who was enjoying a fast-paced career in marketing and raising two children, until both of her parents were diagnosed with terminal illnesses on the same day. In the challenges she faced and the choices she made, readers will learn how they can navigate their own caregiving experience and/or prepare for when they are inevitably called on to care for their parents. Working Daughter sparks the conversation we so desperately need to have about women and the workplace. With 10,000 people turning 65 every day and a shortage of caregivers predicted in the next few years, it’s time we talk about how family caregivers and their employers will face the impact of a rapidly aging society. This book fills the gap in the literature on women and work; there are volumes of books about managing career and children, but little advice on how to balance career and parents. Working Daughter provides a blueprint for women and a call to action for business leaders and policy makers. This is book is for women who want straight talk and real advice about the challenges of eldercare, the choices they will need to make, the aspects of caregiving they can control, and that which they cannot. And finally, Working Daughter shows family caregivers how they can achieve, the underreported but well-documented upside to caring for an aging parent, the caregiver’s gain.