Recess for caregivers: work falls on women – 12/26/2023 – Balance

During school holidays, Steffany Gomes, 33, wakes up earlier and brings forward her work tasks so that when her three-year-old daughter wakes up, she can start her care work. On a daily basis, Gomes works two days in person and works from home for the other three. Her daughter stays at daycare between 7am and 5pm.

She says that, during breaks, she needs to deal with caring for her daughter and her professional work. “I stay at home and the routine is chaos, I need to stop at her time to give her lunch, to give her coffee, when we wake up we have to pay attention, it’s very difficult,” she says.

Cintia Gerard, 34, takes care of her mother-in-law who is bedridden due to Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and fibromyalgia. His mother-in-law currently lives in a nursing home as she requires intensive, full-time care.

The daughter-in-law says that she visits the home every day to take food, which is through a tube, medicines and personal hygiene items. For the daughter-in-law, the routine is tiring, but “at the end of the year, it gets a little more complicated, because work schedules intensify and professionals [do lar de permanência de idosos] go on vacation.”

Gerard says that basic care services, such as food and bathing, are not interrupted. However, assistance from health professionals and doctors is scarcer. “The home’s management itself says that the staff is very small,” he says.

“But her care and the family’s presence have to be daily. Especially because we have, due to the status of the elderly, to provide this service. We know about the emotional responsibility, but also the legal and social responsibility in providing this assistance regardless of time”, says Gerard.

Psychologist Aline Couto explains that the division of labor places women much more in the sphere of care work. “It’s work for others, which involves paying attention and organizing details that involve other people and still thinking about themselves,” she says.

For the psychologist, these demands make women feel increasingly overwhelmed.

In addition to daily attention, Gerard states that he needs to plan for the end of the year, as some pharmacies, which sell more specific supplies, are also taking a break. “I have to anticipate, I have to buy twice as much of her diet, double the amount of diapers. I have to be attentive not only to the issue of care, but to the issue of supplies for her daily care.”

Couto highlights that this planning is also a mental burden for women. “We learn from childhood to think about what needs to be done. This is a division that exists in society, no matter how much you can try to reduce this burden on yourself, the outside world will demand it from you”, she says.

Gomes states that, even though she shares the care with her daughter’s father, “the mother has more responsibility to stay at home, to be with the child”, he says. “My husband picks her up from daycare. Sometimes, there’s traffic, and I get worried that he won’t be able to get there on time.”

She also highlights that she cannot entrust her daughter’s care to a nanny, for example. “I could hire someone to stay with her all day, but we often see in reports that the father himself abuses the children. Imagine someone we don’t know? I have this insecurity,” she says.

Women’s professional lives end up being affected by this extra shift. Gomes says that her company understands when she needs to work from home and her boss is flexible. “But I’m not there at the company on the days my team has to be there, that makes me insecure.”

Gerard also planned his professional life with care for his mother-in-law in mind. “I chose to work in a location extremely close to where she is to provide this more intensive assistance,” he says.

Psychologist Aline Couto understands that, despite the overload, these care jobs are emotionally important for women. “If it were just bad, we might not do it. But there are other consequences, there’s this sense of community that is generally very important for women too,” she explains.

Gerard says that caring for his mother-in-law is tiring. “But what motivates us every day is knowing that we are providing the best for her. One day, she will no longer be here, her time is running out, so we do our best to provide more comfort.”

Couto emphasizes that it is important to realize when this care work is excessively burdensome. “Exhaustion has to do with mental acceleration, the feeling that you can’t rest, when it becomes something that you can’t turn off your thoughts. It’s different from tiredness where you rest and feel better the next day,” he says. . The psychologist states that it is necessary to pay attention to feelings to avoid these burnouts.

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